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STATUE OF KING ALFRED AT WINCHESTER. 



THE STORY 
OF KING ALFRED 



BY 

WALTER BESANT 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1902 



THF LIBRARY OF 
CONOR ESS. 

T~r> Caw,- RKOfe«ver> 

NOV. g? 1902 

OpPMWOMT W*T»v 

MtVbSb 

OOf»Y « 



Copyright, 1901, 1002, 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



CONTENTS. 



1/ 



Introduction : 

i. The Author's Design 
ii. The Authorities 
hi. The Genealogy of Alfred and 
scendants .... 

CHAPTER 

I. England in the Ninth Century 
II. Childhood and Education 

III. Alfred's Wars . 

IV. Alfred in Religion . 
V. Alfred as Law-giver 

VI. Alfred as Educator 
VII. Alfred as Writer . 
VIII. Summary of the Reign 
IX. Death of the King 



De- 



PAGE 

9 

14 

19 

22 

48 
72 

113 
127 
140 
146 
163 
l8l 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 





PAGE 


Statue of King Alfred at Winchester 


Frontispiece 


Map of England .... 


. 24 


The Isle of Athelney 


• 95 


Saxon Church, North Porch . 


. 124 


Saxon Church, Interior . 


• 125 


King Alfred's Jewel 


. . . 165 


Penny of Alfred the Great 


. 170 


King Alfred . 


. . - 187 



THE STORY OF KING ALFRED, 



INTRODUCTION. 

I. The Author's Design. 

In the following pages I propose to attempt a 
life of the greatest of all Englishmen that may 
be procured by all classes of the English people. 
I shall present a portrait of Alfred without dis- 
sertations on the authenticity of episodes or the 
trustworthiness of biographers. I desire to write 
such a history of the great king as shall be 
accessible and instructive to the great body — 
every year growing greater — of those who read 
books and wish to be acquainted with the na- 
tional history. I shall endeavour not to exag- 
gerate the achievements of the king — they want 
no exaggeration ; or to over-state the obligations 
which the posterity of Alfred owe to his memory 
— they can hardly be over-stated. The plain and 
unvarnished story should be sufficient. This at- 
tempt is, it will be observed, ambitious. It is far 
harder to win the confidence of the people at 
large than to attract the attention of those who 
use circulating libraries. Most books are written 
for the latter class ; they number a few thousands, 
9 



10 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

or tens of thousands. I want, on the other hand, 
this little book to fall into the hands of the Board 
Schools, of the Continuation Classes, of those 
who spend their evenings over books from the 
free libraries, which are rapidly creating a revo- 
lution in the thoughts and standards of the people. 
To the class which maintains the circulating li- 
brary belongs the moving panorama of modern 
literature, in which one book follows another, is 
read, or looked into, and disappears, while even 
the critics remember nothing of yesterday's books. 
To this class new books are like the novelties of 
fashion in the shops ; they present combinations 
always freshly invented, though of old materials; 
they offer new colours and new styles ; they pass 
away, and are as much forgotten as the fashion 
of the year before last. There is no such show 
to those who haunt the free libraries. If a book 
appeals to them, they do not ask if it is still in the 
fashion ; they read it, they pass it about, they 
keep it, they read it again. To such as these I 
dedicate this Life of Alfred, in the hope that they 
may read with pleasure and continue to read, the 
story of the great English king, and how he saved 
England, and made our record of enterprise and 
success, of freedom, of conquest, of wealth and 
prosperity, of strength and honour, possible to 
our kin and easy of accomplishment. They will 
also read, if they can, how all these achievements 
were made possible by the tenacity and bull-dog 
courage of Alfred's people — the men of Wessex, 
Sussex, and Kent. No king, however great, wise, 
far-seeing, and resolute, can do more that his peo- 
ple will let him do. He is like an engineer who, 
with all his science, has in the long run nothing 
to depend upon but the strength of his materials. 



INTRODUCTION. 1 1 

Now, the materials with which Alfred had to 
work were very strong indeed — strong to ob- 
stinacy and blind conservatism. 

The Life of Alfred has been of late very much 
spoken of by the Press : it will be spoken of much 
more when, in the autumn of this year, the great 
millenary celebration of the king is held in his 
venerable capital of Winchester. This book is 
partly written with a view to the right under- 
standing of the celebration. The whole of the 
English-speaking race ought to understand why 
we hold this Function. I desire that all those 
who read the accounts in the papers of the Func- 
tion may understand exactly what it means ; 
what manner of man Alfred was ; what kind of 
world he lived in ; what he did ; why we honour 
him ; why, wherever our language is spoken, we 
must continue to remember him and to honour 
him. 

There are already many Lives of Alfred, but 
there is not one, I believe, which is written with 
this object. There are no new facts in my pages ; 
but there are none in the pages of these other 
books. The only new features in every new Life 
of Alfred are the application of modern investi- 
gation into the conditions of life in the ninth cen- 
tury. Thus, for instance, in the " Book of Essays 
on Alfred," published two years ago by Mr. Bow- 
ker, the Mayor of Winchester, there was a series 
of " Studies," based upon modern examination 
into the condition of England during the ninth 
century, with no new facts in the actual life of the 
king. Alfred was considered from various points 
— those of Religion, Law, War, Education, and 
Literature. The Essays formed between them 
the best Life of Alfred yet produced, but the facts 



12 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

remained the same. We can hardly hope to add 
to these facts by any new discovery. The Essays 
were most valuable, not in adding to a record al- 
ready familiar, but in showing what that record 
proved and meant. In the following pages I 
have referred to this book on several occasions. 
If I have not always acknowledged with grati- 
tude the source of certain paragraphs due to this 
book, I hope that this general acknowledgment 
will prove sufficient. 

The Introduction to the book consists of an 
address which I was invited to deliver before the 
people of Winchester, as preparatory to the first 
steps towards the celebration. I wish it had 
been more worthy of the subject. My audience 
was representative ; not only were the scholars 
and divines of Winchester present, with th*e nota- 
bles of the city, but also a large number of work- 
ing people who filled up the hall. It was with 
the most lively satisfaction that I found the sub- 
ject one that would hold and interest this part of 
the assemblage. If the subject could interest the 
folk of Winchester, why should it not interest 
also the larger company of the working class over 
the whole of the Anglo-Saxon world ? I desire 
to stand before a larger audience in a wider the- 
atre. I desire to fill that theatre with the people 
to whom at present Alfred is but a name, if even 
that. I should like, if it were possible, to see be- 
fore me, in imagination, tier beyond tier, stretch- 
ing far away in the distance, circle beyond circle, 
millions of white faces intent upon the story of 
the English king. If they will listen, my voice 
will reach to the farthest circle; if they are inter- 
ested, they will listen. Let me see their faces 
light up as if touched by sunshine when the in- 



INTRODUCTION. 1 3 

terest of the subject fills them; let me see the 
changes as of passing rain and sunshine on an 
April day on the faces of this vast audience. 
Wherever they live, in whatever climate, under 
whatever name, they own their liberty, which they 
enjoy unconsciously, as they enjoy the free air of 
heaven — their peace, order, security, self-govern- 
ment, all of which they accept as if these things 
came by nature with the harvest and the fruits of 
the season in due course — to the great and wise 
King Alfred, whose history every man and woman 
of the English-speaking race ought to learn, and 
every boy and girl to know. 

I would rather write a book for the people 
than anything else that the world can offer. He 
who reaches the heart of the people becomes and 
continues an abiding force. Truly, his work lives 
after him — his good work. Think of the influ- 
ence, for two hundred years and more, of the " Pil- 
grim's Progress " ! What could man desire bet- 
ter than for all these years to be a champion of 
religious liberty and the sturdy individualism 
which has done so much for the national charac- 
ter and the national history ? It is a great ambi- 
tion — there can be none greater; the glories that 
a State can offer — the honour, the distinction, the 
wealth are insignificant before such an achieve- 
ment. Let me be permitted to entertain the am- 
bition, even though it is not destined to be ful- 
filled. 

In the name, then, of everything that is dear 
to us and profitable to us; in the name of godli- 
ness, patience, resolution, frankness, wisdom, and 
self-sacrifice, let us endeavour to make Alfred bet- 
ter known to his great-grandchildren. We are 
all his great-grandchildren. Our ancestors of a 



14 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

thousand years ago numbered all the people of 
Wessex, Kent, and Sussex, and among them the 
royal line of Cerdic, with Alfred as the common 
great-grandfather. W. B. 



II. The Authorities. 

It may be asked at the outset, how we know 
all these things about Alfred. The sources of 
our information are many, but the things they tell 
us are few. First and foremost, there is the " Life 
of Alfred," by Asser, formerly Bishop of Sher- 
borne. This document, about which there has 
been much discussion, was the work of a Welsh 
scholar and ecclesiastic, who was invited by Al- 
fred to join him at his Court to read aloud to 
him and to advise him in matters literary. Asser's 
work appears to have been mutilated and altered, 
or added to in many places, but the greater part 
was always, undoubtedly, as we have it at the 
present day. There are many "undesigned coin- 
cidences" which prove the genuineness of the 
work. Thus, Asser was a descendant of the old 
British race, so goes out of his way to inform his 
readers of the British names of certain places. 
He tells us that the island of Thanet was called 
Ruim; that the village of Snotingaham is called 
by them Tigguocobane ; that Wilton is situated 
near the ancient Guilon ; and that Thornscetan 
is Durngueis. It is not likely that a forged doc- 
ument would take the trouble to invent these de- 
tails. Moreover, there is little, except in one or 
two passages, evidently interpolated and easily 
detected, which contains legend or tradition. 
The " Life " is a contemporary document left un* 



INTRODUCTION. 1 5 

finished some five or six years before the king's 
death ; the autobiographical parts bear every pos- 
sible mark of truth ; while, scattered here and 
there, are passages of irrepressible personal ad- 
miration and affection. 
Thus Asser says — 

" Alfred would avail himself of every opportunity to 
procure coadjutors in his good designs, to aid him in his 
strivings after wisdom, that he might attain to what he 
aimed at ; and, likea prudent bird, which, rising in sum- 
mer with the early morning from her beloved nest, steers 
her rapid flight through the uncertain tracks of ether, and 
descends on the manifold and varied flowers of grasses, 
herbs, and shrubs, essaying that which pleases most, that 
she may bear it to her home, so did he direct his eyes afar, 
and seek without that which he had not within, namely, in 
his own kingdom." 

And again — 

"Thus, like a most productive bee, he flew here and 
there, asking questions as he went, until he had eagerly 
and unceasingly collected many various flowers of Divine 
Scriptures, with which he quickly stored the cells of his 
mind." 

These passages are hardly such as a writer at 
second hand, or the writer of a forged biography 
would set down. They have a spontaneous and 
personal air. From the beginning to the end, 
indeed, of the document the loyalty of Asser is 
conspicuous. It is no mere lip-worship that he 
offers ; his love for Alfred is based upon years of 
the closest personal relations, in which the king's 
character, his greatness, his disinterested labours, 
his modesty, his wisdom, his many noble qualities, 
have become gradually revealed to his private 
secretary. We could not have chosen a. better 



1 6 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

biographer, though we might wish for more de- 
tails, a continuation to the end, and a more care- 
fully arranged Life. 

Apart from these points, it is very strong tes- 
timony to the truth of this document that it is 
quoted copiously by the earlier chroniclers, espe- 
cially Florence of Worcester, who died in 1118, 
and wrote somewhere about 1100, or two hundred 
years after Asser. Of course, a great deal may 
happen in two hundred years. At the same time, 
the period 900 a.d. to 1100 a.d. can hardly be 
called one of great literary activity, nor was it a 
period in which, for no apparent motive, a forged 
document such as the " Life of King Alfred " was 
likely to be produced. 

Had a pretended Life of Alfred been foisted 
upon the world, it would have been stuffed with 
fable, legend, and the attribution of works with 
which the king had no concern. Alfred speedily 
became the subject of song and of tradition. In 
the so-called " Proverbs of King Alfred," there 
occurs a song — 

Alfred. 

"Englene Herd [England's Shepherd] 
Englene Darling. 
In Enkelonde he was king : 
Alfred he was in Enkelonde a king — 
Wei swythe strong. 
He was king and cleric 
Full well he loved God's work : 
He was wise in his word, 
And war [wary] in his work. 
He was the wisest man 
That was in England." 

There is, next in importance to Asser's " Life," 
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This document was 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 49 

people. All that Alfred heard about the history 
of the war was a confused tradition of long and 
victorious fighting; the legends and the poetry 
and the glory of the war fell to the lot of the de- 
feated, who, as generally happens, consoled them- 
selves with the legends and achievements of Uther 
Pendragon, King Arthur and his valiant knights, 
for the defeats which cooped them up in Wales 
and Cornwall. There was no King Arthur among 
the Saxons. 

Alfred's mother was Osburh, daughter of Oslac, 
butler or cupbearer to King Ethelwulf, descended 
from the same line as the king himself, through 
the nephew of Cerdic. His ancestors had pos- 
sessed themselves of the Isle of Wight after the 
slaughter at Carisbrook of all the people who 
could not escape. 

It is remarkable that the further back history 
penetrates into the obscurity of the past, the 
deeper is the gulf, the more marked is the sepa- 
ration, between the noble class and the ceorls. 
Since men began to unite for purposes of protec- 
tion, there has never been a time, discernible at 
least, when there was not a caste of nobles. They 
were always the king's men, with privileges of 
their own such as make rank a real thing, holding 
their rank and privileges on the condition of fight- 
ing for king and country. They were the nucleus 
of a standing army and the champions of their 
people. It must not be supposed that they were 
at any time, unless at a time of decay, a faineant 
class. On the contrary, they maintained their 
position with the most desperate courage, even 
under the most adverse circumstances. If, as has 
been said, the first king was a victorious soldier, 
then the first nobles were the men who fought 



50 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

under his banner ; they were a kind of knights 
bannerets created on the field : they were enriched 
with the spoils of war — the wealth of the con- 
quered. The greatest incentive to fierce fighting 
among the nobles was the certainty that defeat 
would lead to the loss of everything that makes 
life tolerable — independence, position, wealth. 
It is true that these fighting men imagined a 
heaven where they could fight all day and feast 
all night, but, like every other kind of heaven, it 
was not in prospect half so desirable as the present 
joys of earth. 

Nothing is known about Osburh beyond the 
vague reports of Asser and others. She is credited 
with the knowledge of those arts and accom- 
plishments which all the Saxon ladies possessed, 
and with the piety which belonged to most of 
them. The Teutonic respect for women was 
nowhere more marked than in England : we can- 
not doubt that she enjoyed, not only as a great 
lady, but also as a woman, the highest possible 
consideration. One would wish to know more 
about her, but it was enough for a woman in that 
age to be the mother of children, the faithful 
wife, the head of the household, the ruler of her 
maidens and serving-women, the directress of her 
son's early education ; that Osburh was also the 
adviser and counsellor of her husband, we may 
very well believe. Into the rest we need not in- 
quire. 

Let me quote Asser on Alfred's childhood — 

" He was loved by his father and mother, and even 
by all the people, above all his brothers, and was educated 
altogether at the court of the king. As he advanced 
through all the years of infancy and youth, his form ap- 
peared more comely than that of his brothers ; in look, in 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 5 I 

speech, and in manners he was more graceful than they. 
His noble nature implanted in him from his cradle a love 
of wisdom above all things, but, with shame be it spoken, 
by the unworthy neglect of his parents and nurses, he re- 
mained illiterate even till he was twelve years old or more ; 
but he listened with serious attention to the Saxon poems 
which he often heard recited, and easily retained them in 
his docile memory. He was a zealous practiser of hunt- 
ing in all its branches, and hunted with great assiduity 
and success; for skill and good f 01 tune in this art, as in 
all others, are among the gifts of God, as we also have 
often witnessed. 

" On a certain day, therefore, his mother was showing 
him and his brothers a Saxon book of poetry, which she 
held in her hand, and said, ' Whichtver of you shall the 
soonest learn this volume shall have it ior his own.' 
Stimulated by these words, or rather bv the Divine inspi- 
ration, and allured by the beautifully illuminated letter at 
the beginning of the volume, he spoke before all his 
brothers, who, though his seniors in age, were not so in 
grace, and answered, ' Will you really give that book to 
one of us, that is to say, to him who can first understand 
and repeat it to you ? ' At this his mother smiled with 
satisfaction, and confirmed what she had before said. 
Upon which the boy took the book out of her hand, and 
went to his master to read it, and in due time brought it 
to his mother and recited it. 

" After this he learned the daily course, that is, the 
celebration of the Hours, and afterwards certain psalms, 
and several prayers, contained in a certain book which he 
kept day and night in his bosom, as we ourselves have 
seen, and carried about with him to assist his prayers, 
amid all the bustle and business of this present life. But, 
sad to say ! he could not gratify his most ardent wish to 
learn the liberal arts, because, as he said, there were no 
good readers at that time in all the kingdom of the West 
Saxons. 

" This he confessed, with many lamentations and 
sighs, to have been one of his greatest difficulties and 
impediments in this life, namely, that when he was 
young and had the capacity for learning, he could not 



52 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

find teachers ; but, when he was more advanced in life, 
he was harassed by so many diseases unknown to all the 
physicians of this island, as well as by internal and ex- 
ternal anxieties of sovereignty, and by continual invasions 
of the pagans, and had his teachers and writers also so 
much disturbed, that there was no time for reading. But 
yet among the impediments of this present life, from 
infancy up to the present time, and, as I believe, even 
until his death, he continued to feel the same insatiable 
desire of knowledge, and still aspires after it." 

The story is impossible because, as we shall 
see immediately, Osburh was dead long before 
Alfred was twelve years of age, and his brothers, 
at that time of his life, were already kings and 
fighting men. But some such story is possible, 
that is to say, the strong desire to possess a beau- 
tiful book, adorned with coloured illuminations — 
then a most rare and costly object — may very 
well have fired a child's imagination and first 
inspired him with the love of learning which 
afterwards so greatly distinguished him. It is 
not a common story; it does not belong to any 
other king, prince, or country; it is not a piece 
of folk-lore; on the other hand, it is of no impor- 
tance whatever, except in indicating, by this fanci- 
ful legend, the early leaning of Alfred towards 
learning and letters. We may find also in the story 
a tradition of Osburh's love for learning, and her 
desire that her children should be educated. 

It has been suggested that instead of Osburh 
we should read Judith, the child-wife of the old 
King Ethelwulf. But here, again, dates do not 
allow of this substitution. When Alfred was in 
his seventh year, Ethelwulf was married to Judith. 
In his ninth year Ethelwulf died ; in his eleventh 
year Judith went back to France. 






CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 53 

The story might possibly be told of Alfred by 
the substitution of St. Swithin's name for that of 
Osburh. Bishop Swithin died when Alfred was 
in his thirteenth year. In that case we should 
have to take the " brothers " as meaning the com- 
panions of the boy. This seems a reasonable 
theory, if it is at all necessary to account for the 
story, or to find out how far it is true. 

We may very well believe, without question, 
the truth of Asser's statement, that the boy Alfred 
listened with rapt attention to the Saxon poems. 
Many boys did so who showed no results from their 
listening in an after-harvest of literature. Also 
that the boy became a great hunter. It was a 
large part of the winter amusements to listen to 
the minstrel, or the " glee-man," reciting or chant- 
ing his songs to the music of the harp, while not 
to know the science of hunting and to follow its 
practice would have been unworthy of an English 
gentleman. 

The royal race of Wessex were descended 
from Cerdic, and through him, from the sun-god 
Wodin, who ruled over heaven from his palace in 
Asgard, and over earth from that of Valhalla. 
Long after their conversion to Christianity the 
people were proud of the royal descent from 
Wodin. From father to son they were stout and 
stalwart fighting men, wise in counsel, and bold in 
action. The chief duty of the king in those times 
of continual warfare was to lead in battle as well 
as to direct the fight. He stood in the forefront, 
armed with his great battle-axe, and clad in mail. 
In the long list of battles which fills the pages of 
the Chronicle, the number of kings slain shows 
that they were captains in action as well as gen- 
erals in design. It must be borne in mind that 



54 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

only a strong and' well-built frame could thus 
fight; a weakling could not possibly become a 
king. The record of Alfred's battles, his per- 
sistence, his disregard of fatigue, his apparent 
immunity from wounds in battle indicate clearly 
a physique of the strongest and toughest kind. 
He was afflicted, we are told, with a painful dis- 
order. Whatever it was, it had no weakening 
effect. Alfred, to the very end, was the fighting 
man first and foremost. 

The town of Wantage was a royal vill, that 
is to say, one of the residences of the king. A 
royal vill was one of the many places where the 
king held his court, journeying from one to the 
other, receiving rents and dues paid in kind for 
want of money, of which there was not much in 
the land. Among other royal vills of Wessex 
besides Wantage, were Winchester, Chippenham, 
Reading, Sherborne, Wimborn, Southampton, 
" Dene," " Leonaford," and others. The court 
arrived at a royal vill, stayed there while the 
revenues, in the. shape of provisions, lasted, and 
then went on to another. The situation of the 
vills is sometimes instructive. Thus, when we 
find, among the royal vills of Mercia, many places 
in the east of the country, as Bensington, Offley, 
Berkhampstead, Bedford, and Hitchin, we are re- 
minded of the continual troubles and fighting on 
the Welsh March, and, in the same way, certain 
conclusions might be arrived at from the position 
of the royal vills of Wessex. 

The actual extent of the Wessex kingdom in- 
cluded the under-kingdoms of Kent and the South 
Saxons. It stretched, therefore, from Dartmoor 
on the west to the sea-coast of Kent in the east ; 
was bounded by the sea on the south, and the 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 55 

river Thames on the north, not taking into ac- 
count the shadowy supremacy which ceased to be 
real with the death of Egbert. 

Wessex of all the Saxon kingdoms, was the 
most advanced in all the arts— in religion learn- 
ing and all that we call civilization. 1 he man- 
ner' of life among the better sort was largely in- 
fluenced by the example of the Franks across the 
Channel There was a more settled order— there 
was less anarchy, there was more cultivation, and 
there was greater security from enemies. Its 
kings carried war into Cornwall, and so kept 
down the Britons. The coast was vulnerable and 
open to pirates, but there was little fear of them 
until the ninth century; access to the Continent 
was easy; the land was defended on the land- 
ward side by forests and rivers. It was, however, 
a very small part of the country that was actually 
settled and cultivated. Alfred's kingdom was but 
a tiny realm of no apparent consequence— thinly 
populated, sparsely settled— yet has it made its 
enduring mark wherever the Anglo-baxon lan- 
guage is spoken. 

While the boy was still a child he lost his 
mother It is not known when or how Osburh 
died but it was before Alfred was four years of 
age unless the tradition is true that Osburh was 
divorced by her husband, and lived for many 
years afterwards, dying in one of her son Alfred s 
religious houses. But life in the ninth century 
was shorter and more uncertain than in the 
twentieth. Let us believe that Osburh died 
comparatively young. 

In 8s S he was sent by his father to Rome, 
being taken there by Bishop Swithin (or Swithun, 
as it is now customary to write his name), who 



56 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

also carried many costly gifts to the pope. The 
reason why the child was sent there is not ap- 
parent ; not, certainly, to put him in a place of 
safety, because there was no immediate danger in 
Wessex. Probably it was in order that he might 
obtain some special blessing from the "Supreme 
Pontiff," whom Ethelwulf recognized. Whatever 
the reason, the child was anointed by the pope, 
and adopted as his spiritual son. It is some- 
times stated that he was recognized as future 
King of Wessex. This, however, is clearly im- 
possible; first, because the pope did not claim the 
right of electing kings, and next, because there 
was not the slightest reason for supposing that 
his four elder brothers would all die young. One 
would be inclined rather to consider the anointing, 
if it took place, as part of a form of adoption by 
which the children of kings were received by the 
pope as his spiritual sons. The date of Alfred's 
arrival at Rome has been happily established by 
the discovery of a letter written by the pope, Leo 
IV., in the year 853, to King Ethelwulf, announc- 
ing the safe arrival of the child. 

It is remarkable, in connection with this de- 
sign for protecting Alfred, to note that among 
the English Christians there had never been any 
doubt or wavering as to the personal sanctity of 
the pope. Probably such scandals and rumours 
as had already gathered about successive pontiffs 
were unknown in this distant land. There had 
been a continuous stream of pilgrims every year 
to Rome. There was a school at Rome for the 
instruction of English clergy. Two of the West 
Saxon kings, Csedwall and Ine, had retreated to 
Rome, there to live out the remainder of their 
days. Ethelwulf himself, during the whole of 



Childhood and education. 57 

his life, ardently desired to perform this pilgrim- 
age, which he was not able to undertake until he 
had arrived at sixty years of age. He took with 
him a present of gold cups and embroidered vest- 
ments for the pope. Pauli pretends that the gifts 
were " magnificent," a word which seems hardly 
justified. He reserved one-tenth of his private 
fortune for the Church, endowing lamps for the 
shrines of St. Peter and St. Paul with oil for 
Easter-tide. He was escorted through France 
by a guard furnished by Charles the Bald ; and, 
while at Rome, he rebuilt and endowed, it is said, 
the English school. 

An attempt has been made to connect Alfred's 
love of literature and the arts, together with his 
religious inclination, with the court of the pope, 
then Leo IV. This seems to me sheer nonsense. 
Let any one ask himself how far his own love of 
literature and art was developed at the- age of 
four or five by his surroundings. We have also 
been called upon to believe that the external pol- 
itics of Rome became a stimulus to the child in 
his future tenacity of resistance to the Danes. 
What does a child of four understand either of 
foreign or domestic events ? Let us dismiss 
these speculations. The boy, in accordance with 
the superstition of the age, was taken to Rome in 
order to receive blessing, or consecration, or 
Confirmation at the hands of the pope. With him 
were taken valuable presents for the pope — a 
gold crown, gold dishes, urns silver gilt, stoles 
and robes embroidered with silk and gold. As 
the son of a king — as the son of a king so faith- 
ful, the descendant of a line so faithful — the child 
was received with honour and distinction. 

It was in 853 that Alfred was sent to Rome. 



5 8 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

In 855 King Ethelwulf himself arrived at the 
Holy City, and early in 856 Ethelwulf took the 
boy away with him. He was then in his seventh 
year, and, of course, still in the hands of nurses 
and women. Queen Osburh, his mother, was 
dead. Ethelwulf, then sixty years of age, who 
had been fighting, and with success, during the 
greater part of his life against the Welsh and the 
northern invaders, naturally desired for the time 
which still remained to him — rest and peace. He 
might be assisted in securing both by an alliance 
with the powerful Emperor Charles the Bald. 
The latter held his court at Verberie, near Com- 
piegne, where he received Ethelwulf on his re- 
turn from Rome. At Verberie the West Saxon 
king found a consort instead of an ally; perhaps 
some kind of an alliance was agreed upon : the 
marriage was surely designed and carried out for 
political reasons on both sides. Else why did 
Ethelwulf, in his old age, choose a girl of twelve ? 
and why did Charles give his daughter, still a 
child, to this greybeard ? It was surely with a 
view to establish and to maintain friendship be- 
tween the two courts that the marriage was al- 
lowed ; though the events proved that the attempt 
was useless — no such alliance was accepted on 
the north side of the English Channel. Ethelwulf 
was married on October 1, 856, the marriage cere- 
mony being performed by Archbishop Hincmar. 
The coronation of the young queen was solemnly 
held. This was not in conformity with the usage 
of the West Saxons. To this point I will return 
immediately. Meantime we have been again 
called upon to believe that Alfred's love of learn- 
ing and his ideas of true kingcraft were inspired 
in him, and indelibly stamped upon his mind, by 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 



59 



the short stay of three months in the learned and 
refined court of Verberie. One asks, with im- 
patience, what the child understood of all the 
learning that was assembled in that court ? which 
of the scholars talked to him ? which of them in- 
structed him ? what notice was likely to be taken 
in that great court of a child in the nursery ? 
what his nurse and the women in the nursery un- 
derstood of all these learned men ? Surely these 
questions show the absurdity of the pretension, 
which we may pass over as foolish and futile. It 
was not thus that the boy was educated; the 
splendour of Rome, the learning of Verberie, 
were to him not even a passing show; he was 
too young to understand anything. 

Ethelwulf brought the boy home, together 
with his young queen. On his arrival he was met 
by a combination which has been variously de- 
scribed. Pauli calls it a revolt of the son against 
the father; it has also been called a revolt 
against the king, on account of the coronation of 
the young queen. What happened was, appar- 
ently, this — 

Ethelbald, the eldest surviving son of Ethel- 
wulf, with certain thanes of power, entered into a 
rebellious conspiracy not to allow the old king 
to return to his authority. I suppose there is no 
doubt as to this main fact. Ethelwulf, discover- 
ing on his return what had occurred, acquiesced 
in the decision, and quietly resigned the crown 
of Wessex to his son, reserving for himself the 
under-kingdom of Kent, where he spent the rest 
of his life — less than two years — in the practice 
of good and pious works. 

There is a very strange story in Asser. We 
cannot choose but believe a story of this impor- 



60 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

tance, told by a contemporary; but a stranger 
story cannot be found in history. Let Asser tell 
it in his own words — 

"When Ethelwulf, therefore, was coming from Rome, 
all that nation, as was fitting, so delighted in the arrival 
of the old man, that, if he permitted them, they would 
have expelled his rebellious son Ethelbald, with all his 
counsellors, out of the kingdom. But he, as we have 
said, acting with great clemency and prudent counsel, so 
wished things to be done, that the kingdom might not 
come into danger; and he placed Judith, daughter of 
King Charles, whom he had received from her father, by 
his own side on the regal throne, without any controversy 
or enmity from his nobles, even to the end of his life, con- 
trary to the perverse custom of that nation. For the na- 
tion of the West Saxons do not allow a queen to sit beside 
the king, nor to be called a queen, but only the king's 
wife ; which stigma, the elders of that land say, arose 
from a certain obstinate and malevolent queen of the same 
nation, who did all things so contrary to her lord, and to 
all the people, that she not only earned for herself exclu- 
sion from the royal seat, but also entailed the same stigma 
upon those who came after her ; for, in consequence of 
that queen, all the nobles of that land swore together 
that they would never let any king reign over them who 
should attempt to place a queen on the throne by his 
side. 

" There was in Mercia, in recent times, a certain 
valiant king, who was feared by all the kings and neigh- 
bouring states around. His name was Offa, and it was 
he who had the great rampart made from sea to sea be- 
tween Britain and Mercia. His daughter, named Ead- 
burga, was married to Bertric, King of the West Saxons ; 
who immediately, having the king's affections, and the 
control of almost all the kingdom, began to live tyranni- 
cally like her father, and to execrate every man whom 
Bertric loved, and to do all things hateful to God and 
man, and to accuse all she could before the king, and so 
to deprive them insidiously of their life and power ; and 
if she could not obtain the king's consent, she used to 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 6 1 

take them off by poison ; as is ascertained to have been 
the case with a certain young man beloved by the king, 
whom she poisoned, finding that the king would not listen 
to any accusation against him. It is said, moreover, that 
King Bertric, unwittingly, tasted of the poison, though 
the queen intended to give it to the young man only, and 
so both of them perished. 

" Bertric, therefore, being dead, the queen could re- 
main no longer among the West Saxons, but sailed beyond 
the sea with immense treasures, and went to the court of 
the great and famous Charles, King of the Franks. As 
she stood before the throne and offered him money, 
Charles said to her, ' Choose, Eadburga, between me and 
my son, who stands here with me.' She replied foolishly, 
and withcut deliberation, ' If I am to have my choice, I 
choose your son, because he is younger than you.' At 
which Charles smiled and answered, 'If you had chosen 
me, you would have had my son ; but as you have chosen 
him, you shall not have either of us.' 

" However, he gave her a large convent of nuns, in 
which, having laid aside the secular habit and taken the 
religious dress, she discharged the office of abbess during 
a few years ; for, as she is said to have lived irrationally 
in her own country, so she appears to have acted still 
more so in that foreign country ; for, being convicted of 
having an unlawful intercourse with a man of her own 
nation, she was expelled from the monastery by King 
Charles's order, and lived a vicious life of reproach in pov- 
erty and misery until her death ; so that at last, accom- 
panied by one slave only, as we have heard from many 
who saw her, she begged her bread daily at Pavia, and 
so miserably died." 

The story was, perhaps, known to the ruling 
class in Wessex ; it was probably in the main 
lines quite true. Yet surely one cannot believe 
that the hatred of the people for Eadburga was 
extended to all the queens in all the Saxon king- 
doms. 

Let us rather seek the causes of Ethelwulf's 



62 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

deposition in the condition of the times. The 
thanes understood that the dangers of the situa- 
tion were very great. The Norsemen were rap- 
idly advancing ; they had overrun the whole of 
the north country; they were landing with im- 
punity on the coasts of Norfolk and Essex. The 
Welsh were restless, looking to the Norsemen 
for help and alliance, dreaming even of sweeping 
the Saxons back to the sea. Above all things a 
strong king — a king in the full vigour of man- 
hood, was wanted. We ourselves, over whom a 
king reigns but does not rule, find it difficult to 
understand the enormous importance of a strong 
king. Even now, with all the precautions and 
hedges which we have put up against the royal 
prerogative, the mischief which a weak or vicious 
sovereign would cause the empire might be in- 
tolerable. Formerly, as is shown by the history 
of Ethelred II., of Edward II., of Richard II., 
of Henry VI., weakness meant ruin. We want 
no talk of conspiracy or of rebellion. The 
broad fact remains that the times were full of 
danger ; the outlook was stormy in the extreme. 
Ethelwulf was old; the battle-axe which he had 
wielded with so much vigour hung idly from his 
nerveless wrist ; his counsels were no longer 
warlike and inspiriting; it was necessary that he 
should give place to a stronger and a younger 
king. Ethelbald his son was a soldier of proved 
courage and capacity: let him reign in the place 
of his father. The situation is so clear, the 
necessity was so pressing, that all the indigna- 
tion against the wickedness of rebellion is abso- 
lutely wasted. The king, enfeebled by years, 
devoted to works of piety, asking for nothing 
more than security and peace, acquiesced with 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 63 

contentment; he remained a king in name, but 
his authority and command he had handed over 
to his son; he recognized the logic of facts; 
he saw very clearly that the will of the thanes 
could not be resisted ; he acknowledged the 
reasonableness of their request ; and he cheer- 
fully accepted the formal and empty title of 
King of Kent. One understands very well that 
he was quite willing to retire. When one has 
passed the age of sixty, the battle-axe grows 
heavy, the coat-of-mail is cumbersome, the posi- 
tion of the forefront of battle is no longer a 
fierce joy, but the probable cause of ignomini- 
ous death ; he was well pleased to hand over the 
reins of power and the splendour of authority to 
younger hands, while he himself practised re- 
ligious works in the security obtained for him 
by the strong right arm of his son. 

Ethelwulf died two years afterwards, leaving 
behind him a will intended to prevent quarrels 
among his sons over the succession. He gave 
his kingdom to be divided between his two eldest 
sons — could anything be more impolitic than to 
divide the little realm, the only bulwark against 
the Danes, into two portions ? — and his private 
property between all his sons and daughters. 
Again — a clause which shows that the king's 
care for his own soul was greater than his care 
for his people — he left a large sum of money to 
be carried to Rome, a third part to be expended 
on the Church of St. Peter, a third part on the 
Church of St. Paul, and a third for the "Uni- 
versal Apostolic Pontiff." He also directed that 
throughout his country, "until the day of judg- 
ment," one poor man in ten should be supplied 
with meat, drink, and clothing ; " " supposing " — 



64 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

a very reasonable objection — " the country should 
still be inhabited by men and cattle and should 
not be deserted." Here we have a note of the 
despondency natural to an old king who had 
been fighting all his life, and now, with death at 
hand, could see no profit of all his trouble, and 
little hope for his country. 

The Witan paid no attention to the will, ex- 
cept, perhaps, to remark that a king of the West 
Saxons had no right to dispose of his kingdom 
after his death. There was no partition, and 
Ethelbald the son reigned in his stead. 

Ethelbald, on the death of his father, actually 
married the young widow Judith. Did this action 
mark a tendency to relapse into paganism ? It 
seems unlikely. The people of Wessex had been 
Christians for nearly two hundred years; the 
Kings of Wessex had been among the most 
faithful sons of the Church. Was it simply un- 
holy love which prompted the act ? Was it love, 
or, in some way, policy ? One knows not. Asser 
speaks of the marriage in terms of the greatest in- 
dignation. It was contrary to Divine Law, con- 
trary to the custom of heathens; it "drew down 
infamy upon his head." It is very possible that 
the same reason was advanced in favour of the 
marriage which was afterwards used for justify- 
ing the marriage of Henry VIII. with his brother's 
widow. Ethelbald, in other respects, appears to 
have been a strong king and a good soldier. 

He died two years after this marriage. Judith, 
thereupon, returned to her father's court. As an 
ancestress of our own king, Edward VII., she 
may have a line devoted to her adventurous 
history. Her father, Charles, who seems to have 
mistrusted her, assigned her to honourable cap- 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 65 

tivity at Senlis. Here, however, she made the 
acquaintance of a valiant young knight, Baldwin 
by name. He was Grand Forester of Flanders, 
and of noble family, but not of birth which 
warranted his aspiring to the hand of a king's 
daughter and widowed queen. However, love 
prevailed. Judith managed to escape, and fled 
with him, taking refuge in Lorraine. Then, by 
the good offices of the Pope, her father became 
reconciled to what had been done, and made her 
husband Count of Flanders. He was afterwards 
known as Bras de Fer — the Iron Arm. Their 
son, Baldwin II., married Alfred's second daugh- 
ter. From her was descended Matilda of Flan- 
ders, Queen of William the Conqueror. Our royal 
family is therefore (see p. 21) connected with 
Alfred by two links at least, the other being 
Matilda of Scotland, Queen of Henry I. 

Ethelbald was succeeded by his next brother, 
Ethelbert, whom Ethelwulf would have passed 
over. Ethelbert reigned for five years, " in great 
tranquillity," says the Chronicle. But in the 
next sentence we read how the invaders stormed 
Winchester, so that there were breaks in the tran- 
quillity. In 866 he died, and was buried in Sher- 
borne. 

In S66 Ethelred, the fourth son, succeeded. 
He also reigned five years, dying in 871. He 
was buried in Wimborne Minster. 

In that year Alfred succeeded. 

To consider these dates with reference to 
Alfred's education: when his elder brother, Ethel- 
bald, succeeded, Alfred was seven years of age; 
at the accession of Ethelbert he was eleven ; at 
the accession of Ethelred he was seventeen. Note 
also that, in 861, when Alfred was thirteen years 
5 



66 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

of age, his old friend, and his father's friend, 
Bishop Swithin (otherwise written Swithun), died. 

In 868 Alfred, being then nineteen, took to 
wife Elswyth, daughter of Ethelred the Mucol 
(the Big), the Chief of the Gainas, a tribe whose 
name still survives in that of the town of Gains- 
borough. We have to fill up a great space in his 
life, namely, the whole of his boyhood. Perhaps 
Alfred continued with his father so long as he 
lived. What became of him then ? Did he go 
with Judith to her unholy marriage with the king ? 
Did Bishop Swithin take charge of him ? We 
have no means of answering the question. 

It was, however, the custom in later years — a 
custom probably observed in the ninth century — 
for the boy to be taken from women and nurses 
as soon as he was strong enough to begin the 
practice of arms and riding, and to place him in 
the court or in the house of some noble, where 
he was daily learned in all manner of manly exer- 
cises, and taught, above all things, to be a soldier. 
We may assume that Alfred's education, after he 
arrived at the age of seven, was chiefly conducted 
in the exercising and training ground among the 
sons of the West Saxon nobles. Wherever he 
was brought up, he heard every day the clash and 
clang of arms. All through his boyhood his pulse 
beat high with the excitement of anticipating the 
time when he, too, would take his place among 
the foremost; all through his boyhood he heard 
the reports of the arrival of more Danes in their 
multitudinous ships, of alternate victories and de- 
feats. He knew not, because no one knew, how 
the Danes were steadily advancing, wintering one 
year in Thanet, the next in Sheppey, then in East 
Anglia, then in the heart of Mercia, closing in 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 67 

upon the land of Wessex. He knew not that he 
was destined to free the country, to drive out the 
invaders, and to make of England what his grand- 
father almost succeeded in doing — one land with 
one law, one religion and one speech. These 
things will be set forth in the pages which follow. 
And, as he grew to manhood, he was transferred 
to the court, and learned the arts of war, not only 
on the parade ground, but also by following the 
king's armies, and watching the fight, though as 
yet from afar. 

The Wessex court was by this time a court of 
ceremonial and some splendour. The time had 
gone by when a Saxon king went about adminis- 
tering justice from a waggon. There were royal 
vills and palaces, not too splendid, being timber 
structures hung within with tapestry and arms; 
but there was what we may call a modern court, 
with ceremonial, and with officials chosen from 
the noble families; there was an aristocracy 
strictly separated from the rest of the nation. 
Their duty was to furnish a kind of standing 
army, well armed, in coats of mail, well horsed, 
but small in number. As soon as the young 
Alfred had arrived at an age capable of manly 
exercises and the use of weapons, he joined this 
army, acquired the manners due to his rank, and 
was trained in the art of war. To fight was the 
first duty of every man — to fight, and to die if 
death were meted out. The first duty of a prince 
was to lead the army, and to fight in the fore- 
front. To take an interest in literature, learning, 
and the arts was not thought necessary ; to hunt 
was both a pastime and a necessity when the 
forests were filled with game of all kinds. The 
power of making music and singing was not given 



6$ THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

to all, but was envied by all. Great was the re- 
spect paid to the minstrel; while the lads, prince- 
lings or thanelings, kept up their bodily strength 
by all kinds of rough-and-tumble games. 

Alfred was only nineteen when he became a 
bridegroom; young men then developed fast. No 
doubt at nineteen he could wield the great battle- 
axe as deftly and as surely as his brother the 
king. Later ages have seen among the sons of 
kings even younger bridegrooms. 

We can trace in outline, not in detail, the 
political events of Alfred's boyhood, but as re- 
gards the steps of his education and the place of 
his education, we cannot do more than surmise, 
and set down what seems probable. 

We must, therefore, be content to know that 
Alfred, from the very beginning of his public life, 
showed himself valiant and wise in battle; and in 
later times, when he was able to think of other 
things, wiser in council, keener in vision, and 
more far-reaching in design than any king who 
had gone before, or, as the event proved, any 
king who was to come after. 

Again, as regards the proposal to consider 
Alfred's love of literature as due to the deep im- 
pression made upon him by the court of Charles 
the Bald, we must remember, not only that the 
boy was only six years of age at the time, and 
was of course kept in the nursery quite apart 
from the scholars and divines of the court, but 
also that the court of Wessex itself was by no 
means illiterate. The monasteries contained 
scholars and students and monks, who kept 
alive the lamp of learning; the priests who 
served the churches had some tincture of learn- 
ing; many noble ladies, taught in the nunnery, 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 69 

understood Latin as well as embroidery. The 
atmosphere of court and country in the ninth 
century was warlike, but, until the destruction 
of everything by the Danes, who overthrew and 
burned more than towers and monasteries — the 
very desire for knowledge — it was by no means 
illiterate; while there was a whole body of splen- 
did verse — heroic, religious, warlike, legendary, 
domestic — which was chanted and recited in the 
long winter evenings, while king and thanes, 
queen and ladies, sat round the fire, and waited 
for the coming of the spring and the return of 
the Danes. Not the memories of Rome or of 
Verberie made Alfred love learning, but the 
poetry of his time, the illuminated books, and 
the understanding which came to him later, that 
learning is better for a people than laws, and the 
wisdom of books is far more useful than statutes 
of prohibition and ordinances of penalty. 

The account of Alfred's marriage, in 868, 
gives his biographer an opportunity of relating 
the mysterious story of his lifelong disease. The 
wedding was of ill omen, though the omens 
proved false, for the year was one of famine. 

" His nuptials were honourably celebrated in Mercia, 
among innumerable multitudes of people of both sexes ; 
and, after continual feasts both by night and by day, he 
was immediately seized, in presence of all the people, by 
a sudden and overwhelming pain, as yet unknown to the 
physicians ; for it was unknown to all who were then 
present, and even to those who daily see him up to the 
present time — which, sad to say ! is the worst of all, that 
he should have protracted it so long, from the twentieth 
to the fortieth year of his life, and even more than that 
through the space of so many years— from what cause so 
great a malady arose. For many thought that this was 
occasioned by the favour and fascination of the people 



70 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

who surrounded him ; others, by some spite of the devil, 
who is ever jealous of the good ; others, from an unusual 
kind of fever. He had this sort of severe disease from 
his childhood : but once. Divine Providence so ordered it, 
that when he was on a visit to Cornwall for the sake of 
hunting, and had turned out of the road to pray in a cer- 
tain chapel, in which rests the body of St. Guerir, and 
now also St. Neot rests there— for King Alfred was 
always, from his infancy, a frequent visitor of holy places 
for the sake of prayer and almsgiving — he prostrated 
himself for private devotion, and, after some time spent 
therein, he entreated of God's mercy that, in His bound- 
less clemency, He would exchange the torments of the 
malady which then afflicted him for some other lighter 
disease ; but with this condition, that such disease should 
not show itself outwardly in his body, lest he should be 
an object of contempt, and less able to benefit mankind : 
for he had great dread of leprosy or blindness, or any 
such complaint, as makes men useless or contemptible 
when it afflicts them. When he had finished his prayers, 
he proceeded on his journey, and not long after he felt 
within him that, by the hand of the Almighty, he was 
healed, according to his request, of his disorder, and that 
it was entirely eradicated, although he had first had even 
this complaint in the flower of his youth, by his devout 
and pious prayers and supplications to Almighty God. 
For, if I may be allowed to speak briefly, but in a some- 
what preposterous order, of his zealous piety to God, in 
the flower of his youth, before he entered the marriage 
state, he wished to strengthen his mind in the observance 
of God's commandments, for he perceived that he could 
with difficulty abstain from gratifying his carnal desires ; 
and, because he feared the anger of God if he should do 
anything contrary to His will, he used often to rise in the 
morning at the cock-crow, and go to pray in the churches 
and at the relics of the saints. There he prostrated him- 
self on the ground, and prayed that God, in His mercy, 
would strengthen his mind still more in His service by 
some infirmity such as he might bear, but not such as 
would render him imbecile and contemptible in his 
worldly duties ; and when he had often prayed with 



CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 71 

much devotion to this effect, after an interval of some 
time, Providence vouchsafed to afflict him with the above- 
named disease, which he bore long and painfully for many 
years, and even despaired of life, until he entirely got rid 
of it by his prayers. But, sad to say ! it was replaced, as 
we have said, at his marriage, by another which inces- 
santly tormented him, night and day, from the twentieth 
to the forty-fourth year of his life. But if ever, by God's 
mercy, he was relieved from this infirmity for a single day 
or night, yet the fear and dread of that dreadful malady 
never left him, but rendered him almost useless, as he 
thought, for every duty, whether human or divine." 

The story is told in the ecclesiastical manner. 
Those very persons, however, who deride the 
statement of the biographer and the faith of the 
sufferer, acknowledge, whenever they attend di- 
vine service, the efficacy of prayer and the work- 
ing of miracles. Day after day — all day long 
and all night — from cathedral and from church ; 
whenever the family meet for devotion ; when- 
ever the mother prays for her children, the wife 
for her husband, the maiden for her betrothed ; — 
all together pray for miracles. They ask that the 
laws of nature may be suspended; that the rain 
may cease ; that dry weather may be granted to 
a saturated land ; that the storm that sweeps the 
ocean may be turned aside from one ship; that 
the bullets of the enemy may be diverted from 
one breast. All is miracle for which we pray. 
The granting of prayer is a miracle. How, then, 
shall we make objection to Asser because he re- 
lates a miracle, or to Alfred because he saw in 
the change of his sufferings a miraculous answer 
to his prayer? Let us deny that prayers are an- 
swered, and then we may deny that miracles take 
place. 

What was this mysterious disease ? It has 



72 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

been suggested that it was epilepsy. I have no 
theory to offer. But the conditions, whatever the 
disease, are clear and simple. It was a malady 
which was incurable by the medical science of the 
time. Certainly this condition leaves the door 
open to a long train of diseases. In addition, it 
was a disease which subjected the king to con- 
tinual pain. Yet it was not a disease which de- 
stroyed his strength or sapped his energies. In 
spite of his suffering, he could still swing that 
terrible battle-axe of his in the front of the bat- 
tle; he could still spend laborious days with his 
counsellors; he could read, listen, translate; he 
could still, and to the very end, take, order, and 
design steps for the good of his people. What- 
ever the suffering, he triumphed over it ; perhaps 
he made a ladder of it for climbing higher. He 
endured in patience, and until it killed him he 
would not give way to it. What disease is there 
of all the multitudinous catalogue of the ills 
which plague humanity which satisfies these con- 
ditions : tortures, but not exhausts; is constant 
in its pain, but does not destroy the strength; 
leaves the patient but little respite, but does not 
weaken his will or darken his mind ? I know 
not. 



CHAPTER III. 

Alfred's wars. 

The wmole of the ninth century was one long- 
continued time of war. The kings fought against 
each other ; nation was divided against nation ; 
they fought the Welsh of Cumberland, Wales, and 



ALFRED'S WARS. 73 

Cornwall ; they fought the raiders from Norway ; 
they fought the invaders from Denmark. When 
Alfred succeeded, the land, as he said, was "de- 
spoiled by the heathen folk." In the appendix to 
this chapter I have drawn up a list from the 
Chronicle of the battles which were fought upon 
the soil of England during this century. 

Briefly, Egbert died in 836, and the supremacy 
of Wessex practically died with him. Ethelwulf, 
his son, who succeeded him, was already in mid- 
dle life, and the father of at least one son arrived 
at manhood. This son, Athelstan, he made 
under-king of Kent and of the South Saxons, 
keeping himself free from Wessex and the British 
enemies of Cornwall. Of Athelstan we hear, in 
851, when with Elcherc the ealdorman, he met 
and fought the enemy in ships off Sandwich, tak- 
ing some of their vessels, but not able to prevent 
them wintering in Thanet — the first of many 
winterings on English ground. 

This is the last we hear of a Saxon fleet until 
Alfred once more created a naval force. It was 
in this year that Ethelwulf, with his son Ethel- 
bald, fought the northernmen at Ockley in Sur- 
rey, and "there made the greatest slaughter of 
the heathen that we have heard reported to the 
present day." Nothing more is said about Athel- 
stan ; but five years later we find the third son, 
Ethelbert, taking his place as under-king of Kent 
and Sussex. 

In 860 Ethelbald died, after a short reign of 
five years, and was succeeded by his brother 
Ethelbert. In his reign the heathen landed on 
the coast of Hampshire — probably at Southamp 
ton — and stormed Winchester, but were defeated 
and put to flight by the men of Hampshire. 



74 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

In 865 the Danes made peace with the Kent- 
ish men from their winter quarters in Thanet, tak- 
ing money in return for the promise of peace. 
They broke their pledge, however, and overran 
Kent, ravaging the whole country. 

In 866 Ethelbert died, and was succeeded by 
his fourth brother, Etheired. In that year an- 
other great army of Danes came over and made 
their winter quarters in East Anglia, where the 
people provided them with horses, and bought 
peace of them at a price. 

In 867 they left East Anglia, and went into 
Northumbria; at York, where they were settled 
in the autumn for their winter quarters, the 
Northumbrians attacked them, broke into the 
town, and killed a great many, but were them- 
selves driven out with the loss of both their kings. 
They then, we hear, " made peace," i.e. bought 
peace, "with the army." Observe that we have 
here the third example of a weakness which was 
a direct encouragement to the enemy ; the people 
bought peace in Kent, bought peace in East 
Anglia, bought peace in Northumbria. What 
kind of respect would the Danes hold towards a 
people which bought peace instead of winning 
peace at the sword-point ? Therefore we are in 
no way surprised when we find them going into 
Mercia the following year, and taking up their 
winter quarters at Nottingham. Then the King 
of Mercia, Burhred, who was married to Ethel- 
wulf's daughter, asked the assistance of King 
Etheired, his brother-in-law. Observe that the 
assistance is no longer claimed as it would have 
been if the supremacy of Wessex had been main- 
tained. Wessex is now only another and a sister 
kingdom. Etheired marched to his brother-in- 



ALFRED'S WARS. 75 

law's help, however, accompanied by Alfred, who 
was now in his nineteenth year. They found the 
Danes in a fortified camp at Nottingham. There 
was no great battle; the men of Wessex, finding 
that the enemy would not come out to fight, re- 
tired, and the Mercians " made peace," i.e. bought 
peace — the fourth nation which thus sold their 
honour and betrayed their liberties. 

The weak points in the defence w r ere (see 
Oman on Alfred as Warrior, Bowker's " Alfred," 
p. 119), first, the want of a central organization 
for defence. The necessity for such an organiza- 
tion had probably forced itself upon the recog- 
nition of the leaders; this may explain the ap- 
parent ease with which Wessex obtained the su- 
premacy under Egbert. That supremacy broke 
down on account of the difficulty of moving 
troops from one place to another where there 
were no roads, or only tracks through forests, 
and the waterways of rivers, which were useless 
without boats. Yet we find Burhred of Mercia 
calling in the aid of Ethelred. Against this diffi- 
culty on the part of the defenders set the superior 
mobility of the Danes: they had their light boats, 
which could float on all the rivers, they requisi- 
tioned all the horses ; they had the fleet at their 
backs. While the Saxons were slowly moving 
towards them they could embark and make for 
another part of the country. 

There was, next, the want of a regular army. 
There were two classes of fighting men among 
the Saxons — the thanes, who held the land, and 
were bound to join the host on the summons of 
the king, and the ceorls, or peasants. The for- 
mer class- were well armed, and carried coats-of- 
mail, helmets, and shields; the latter went into 



76 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

battle armed with nothing more than a pike. 
The army was a kind of militia, called a fyrd. 
It was called out by consent of the Witenagemot ; 
it served, as a rule, no more than two months, 
when the men returned to their homes. Before 
success could be hoped, it was absolutely neces- 
sary that the king should be able to call out his 
army without consulting the Witan, and that 
this army should assume a character of greater 
permanence. 

It was also necessary that the men should be 
fully equipped if they were to act with success 
against an enemy whose first care was the acqui- 
sition of good weapons and good armour. In 
order to effect this it was necessary to enlarge the 
class of thanes, who would supply their own arms, 
and to provide better weapons for the ceorls. 

Another point of weakness was the want of 
fortified places. There appear to have been none 
at all.- The Saxons, as we have seen, disliked 
towns and scorned walls. Therefore the old Ro- 
man walls had been allowed to fall into decay ; 
even at York, Chester, London, Winchester, and 
Canterbury, where there were ancient walls, the 
gates had been torn away from their hinges, and 
the walls themselves were broken down. Now, 
the possession of fortified places would have given 
the defenders an enormous advantage; on the 
other hand, the Danes understood the value of 
a fortified position. They chose for their camps 
places protected, for choice, by a river or the bend 
of a river, where their ships could lie moored, and 
for the parts unprotected they dug a ditch and 
then put up a stockade. It seems strange that 
the Saxons should have been so long in learn- 
ing the lesson of the value of fortifications, but 



ALFRED'S WARS. 77 

the habits of a whole people are not easily 
changed. They had first to learn that walls, 
stockades, and ditches were invaluable in war ; 
next, to learn how to construct them ; and lastly, 
how to defend them. 

It seems equally strange that they did not 
understand the value of a fleet. We have seen 
Athelstan- the eldest son, fighting the Danes with 
ships. It is the first appearance of a fleet and the 
last, until Alfred restored the English navy. One 
would like to know more about Athelstan's fleet. 
Since Alfred had at first to rely upon Frisian 
sailors, it seems probable that Athelstan also fell 
back on these people. After the engagement the 
Danes, who wintered in Thanet, overran and rav- 
aged the land of Kent ; Athelstan therefore was 
unable to pay his foreign sailors, and so they went 
home again with their ships. 

After the failure of their attempts on Notting- 
ham, Ethelred and Alfred returned home and the 
fyrd disbanded, we may understand with sinking 
hearts, for now, indeed, nothing was left of Eng- 
land but only their own land of Wessex ; and the 
war would be renewed, and would demand greater 
efforts still in the following spring. 

In the spring of the year 871 the Danes began 
their invasion of Wessex with a large army, con- 
taining not only their own men, but a great num- 
ber of Vikings — the men of Norway. They came 
in their ships; they swept up the Thames, having 
on either bank troops mounted and on foot. They 
met with no opposition until they came to Read- 
ing, where they halted and formed a camp, pro- 
tected by the Kennet and the Thames on two 
sides, and on the third side of the triangular camp 
by a rampart with a stockade and a ditch. Then 



78 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

the Danish eorls went out to plunder. Some of 
them were met by Alderman Ethelwulf with the 
fyrd of Berkshire, and driven off the field with the 
loss of one of their eorls. Then Ethelred and Al- 
fred arrived with reinforcements, and then followed 
fighting in which the brave Alderman was killed, 
and the Saxons had to retire. 

Asser's account is as follows: — 

"In the year of our Lord's Incarnation 871, which 
was the twenty-third of King Alfred's life, the pagan 
army, of hateful memory, left the East Angles, and enter- 
ing the kingdom of West Saxons, came to the royal city 
called Reading, situated on the south bank of the Thames, 
in the district called Berkshire ; and there, on the third 
day of their arrival, their earls, with great part of the 
army, scoured the country for plunder, while the others 
made a rampart between the rivers Thames and Kennet 
on the right side of the same royal city. They were en- 
countered by Ethelwulf, Earl of Berkshire, with his men, 
at a place called Englefield ; both sides fought bravely, 
and made long resistance. At length one of the pagan 
earls was slain, and the greater part of the army de- 
stroyed ; upon which the rest saved themselves by flight, 
and the Christians gained the victory. 

" Four days afterwards, Ethelred, King of the West 
Saxons, and his brother Alfred united their forces and 
marched to Reading, where, on their arrival, they cut to 
pieces the pagans whom they found outside the fortifica- 
tions. But the pagans, nevertheless, sallied out from the 
gates, and a long and fierce engagement ensued. At last, 
grief to say, the Christians fled, the pagans obtained the 
victory, and the aforesaid Earl Ethelwulf was among the 
slain." 

Meantime. the Danes, as at Nottingham, kept 
within their stockade, and refused to come out. 
Ethelred and Alfred retired ; then the Danes, 
thinking that they had fled, came out of their 
camp and marched into Wessex, intending to make 



ALFRED'S WARS 



79 



an end. A few days later they came up with the 
Saxon host at Ashdown. The battle of Ashdown 
is one of the most important events in the history 
of the Danish invasion. The enemy had overrun 
and subdued the whole of the country except 
Wessex ; they were flushed with victory ; they 
were contemptuous of the Saxons; they were ac- 
customed to sell peace for money, and to break 
their pledges when they chose. Now, for the first 
time, they were to meet with a serious repulse, and 
an enemy more determined than those of Mercia 
and Northumbria. 

First, let me quote the words of the Chron- 
icle : — 

" Then Ethelwulf, the Ealdorman, met them at En- 
glefield, and there fought against them, and got the vic- 
tory ; and there one of them, whose name was Sidrac, was 
slain. About three days after this, King Ethelred and 
Alfred his brother led a large force to Reading, and 
fought against the army, and there was great slaughter 
made on either hand. And Ethelwulf the Ealdorman 
was slain, and the Danish men had possession of the 
place of carnage. And about four days after this, King 
Ethelred and Alfred his brother fought against the whole 
army at Ashdown ; and they were in two bodies, in the 
one were Bagsac and Halfdene the heathen kings, and 
in the other were the earls. And then King Ethelred 
fought against the division under the kings, and there 
King Bagsac was slain ; and Alfred his brother against 
the division under the earls, and there Earl Sidrac the 
elder was slain, Earl Sidrac the younger, and EarlOsbern, 
and Earl Frene, and Earl Harold ; and both divisions of 
the army were put to flight, and many thousands slain : and 
they continued fighting until night." 

Asser's account gives more detail: — 

" Roused by this calamity, the Christians, in shame 
and indignation, within four days assembled all their. 



So THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

forces, and again encountered the pagan army at a place 
called Ashdune, which means the " Hill of the Ash." 
The pagans had divided themselves into two bodies, and 
began to prepare defences, for they had two kings and 
many earls, so they gave the middle part of the army to 
the two kings, and the other part to all the earls ; which 
the Christians perceiving, divided their army also into two 
troops, and also began to construct defences. But Alfred, 
as we have been told by those who were present, and 
would not tell an untruth, marched up promptly with his 
men to give them battle ; for King Ethelred remained a 
long time in his tent in prayer, hearing the mass, and said 
that he would not leave it till the priest had clone, or aban- 
don the Divine protection for that of men. And he did 
so, too, which afterwards availed him much with the 
Almighty, as we shall declare more fully in the sequel. 

" Now, the Christians had determined that King 
Ethelred, with his men, should attack the two pagan 
kings, but that his brother Alfred, with his troops, should 
take the chance of war against the two earls. Things 
being so arranged, the king remained a long time in 
prayer, and the pagans came up rapidly to fight. Then 
Alfred, though possessing a subordinate authority, could 
no longer support the troops of the enemy, unless he re- 
treated or charged upon them without waiting for his 
brother. At length he bravely led his troops against the 
hostile army, as they had before arranged, but without 
awaiting his brother's arrival ; for he relied on the Divine 
counsels, and forming his men into a dense phalanx, 
marched on at once to meet the foe. 

"But here I must inform those who are ignorant of 
the fact, that the field of battle was not equally advan- 
tageous to both parties. The pagans occupied the higher 
ground, and the Christians came up from below. There 
was also a single thorn-tree of stunted growth, but we 
have ourselves never seen it. Around this tree the oppos- 
ing armies came together with loud shouts from all sides, 
the one party to pursue their wicked course, the other to 
fight for their lives, their dearest ties, and their country. 
And when both armies had fought long and bravely, at 
last the pagans by the Divine judgment were no longer 



ALFRED'S WARS. 8 1 

able to bear the attacks of the Christians, and, having lost 
great part of their army, took to a disgraceful flight. One 
of their two kings and five earls were there slain, together 
with many thousand pagans, who fell on all sides, cover- 
ing with their bodies the whole plain of Ashdune. 

" There fell in that battle King Bagsac, Earl of Sidrac 
the elder, and Earl Sidrac the younger, Earl Osbern, Earl 
Frene, and Earl Harold ; and the whole pagan army pur- 
sued its flight, not only until night, but until the next day, 
even until they reached the stronghold from which they 
had sallied. The Christians followed, slaying all they 
could reach, until it became dark." 

We must remember that this account is writ- 
ten from the English side. We may quite readily 
accept his statement as to the slaughter and the 
flight of the Danes; but they fled to their forti- 
fied camp, and they were not demoralized by their 
flight or disheartened by their losses. Death on 
the field was natural — the common lot — much 
more desirable than death by old age in a bed ; 
and to run away was by no means a disgrace. 
In a few days — the Chronicle says a fortnight — 
the Danes again took the field. It has been pro- 
posed as an explanation of what followed that 
while Ethelred and Alfred were still on the west 
of Reading, the Danes slipped out and struck 
south, threatening the capital, by way of Basing, 
which lay then, as it lies now, on the road between 
Reading and Winchester. This movement is, of 
course, quite possible, and perhaps the tactics of 
the Danes were thus exactly what they would be 
now; there are strategic movements and combi- 
nations common to all ages, and in every stage of 
the art of war. On learning the southward march 
of the enemy, Ethelred and Alfred marched after 
them, and gave them battle near Basing. An ex- 
amination of the lie of the ground here would per- 
6 



82 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

haps determine the site of the battle. At Basing 
the Saxons were defeated, yet it was little more 
than a reverse. After a rest of two months, the 
Saxons again gave battle to the enemy, this time 
at a place called Meretun, which has been identi- 
fied with a hamlet called Martin, on the Roman 
Road between Winchester and Marlborough; if 
so, it shows that the Danes had abandoned their 
project (if they ever entertained it) of an attack 
upon Winchester, and were marching west. At 
"Meretun," therefore, the next great battle took 
place. The Danes fought in two divisions; the 
Saxons put "both to flight, and during a great 
part of the day were victorious " (Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle) : " but the Danes had possession of 
the place of carnage, and there Bishop Heah- 
mund was slain and many good men. And after 
this there came a great army in the summer to 
Reading. And after this, at Easter, King Ethel- 
red died; and he reigned five years, and his body 
lies in Wimborne Minster." " Ethelred," says 
Asser, " had governed bravely, honourably, and 
with good report for five years, through much 
tribulation." His epitaph in Wimborne recorded 
that he met his death per manus paganorum. Why 
he was not buried with his own people at Sher- 
borne is not apparent, for the place can hardly 
have been in the hands of the enemy. 

In this manner Alfred succeeded to the uneasy 
crown of Wessex. " In this year," the Chronicle 
informs us, "nine general battles were fought 
against the army in the kingdom south of the 
Thames, besides which Alfred, the king's brother, 
and single aldermen and king's thanes, often made 
incursions on them, which are not counted ; and 
within the year nine earls and one king " — Bagsac, 



ALFRED'S WARS. S$ 

the Dane — "were slain. And that year the West 
Saxons made peace with the army." The last 
clause is significant and melancholy. 

Alfred succeeded ; it was his plain duty, unless 
he would leave his people, as some of the Saxon 
princes had done, to their fate, while he retired 
to Rome. That he understood the nature of 
the work that lay before him is shown by his 
own words: " Covetousness and the possession of 
earthly power I did not like well, nor strongly 
desired at all this earthly kingdom, but felt it 
to be the work I was commanded to do." In 
a month after his brother's death Alfred was 
again in the field with a small force. It was at 
Wilton that he once more tried his fortune 
against the enemy. The force was composed, 
apparently, of the Wiltshire fyrd. 

"When he had reigned one month, almost against his 
will, for he did not think he could alone sustain the mul- 
titude and ferocity of the pagans, though even during his 
brothers' lives he had borne the woes of many, he fought 
a battle with a few men, and on very unequal terms, 
against all the army of the pagans, at a hill called Wilton, 
on the south bank of the river Wily, from which river the 
whole of that district is named, and, after a long and 
fierce engagement, the pagans, seeing the danger they 
were in, and no longer able to bear the attack of their 
enemies, turned their backs and fled. But, oh, shame to 
say, they deceived their too audacious pursuers, and again 
rallying, gained the victory. Let no one be surprised that 
the Christians had but a small number of men, for the 
Saxons had been worn out by eight battles in one year 
against the pagans, of whom they had slain one king, 
nine dukes, and innumerable troops of soldiers, besides 
endless skirmishes, both by night and by day, in which the 
oft-named Alfred and all his chieftains, with their men, 
and several of his ministers, were engaged without rest 
or cessation against the pagans. How many thousand 



84 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

pagans fell in those numberless skirmishes God alone 
knows, over and above those who were slain in the eight 
battles above-mentioned. In the same year the Saxons 
made peace with the pagans, on condition that they 
should take their departure, and they did so." 

The Danes consented to be paid for peace. 
Alfred paid them in order to gain time; it was all 
he could do. The Danes, for a time, kept their 
word ; they retired from Reading upon London, 
which they made their winter quarters. London, 
one must point out, was at this time considered 
to belong to Mercia ; the Danes were therefore 
outside Alfred's boundaries. 

It may very well be that the Danes became 
more or less disheartened by the obstinacy of the 
resistance they encountered. But it is a mistake 
to suppose that the resistance was greater in 
Wessex than in other parts. Everywhere it was 
the same experience — the opposition of gallant 
leaders and brave men against superior numbers 
better armed ; the beating down of resistance 
with enormous losses on both sides ; the continual 
arrival of reinforcements from over the sea; an 
inglorious peace, bought and paid for; after a 
while a broken treaty and renewed war. This is 
the history of the Danes in Northumbria and in 
Mercia, as well as in Wessex. Only in Wessex 
the end was different, because the leaders were 
different. The description given by Henry of 
Huntingdon a long time afterwards is both true 
and graphic. 

"If the Danes were sometimes defeated, victory was 
of no avail, inasmuch as a descent was made in some other 
quarter by a large fleet and a more numerous force. It 
was wonderful how, when the English kings were hasten- 
ing to encounter them in the eastern districts, before they 



ALFRED'S WARS. 85 

could fall in with the enemy's band, a hurried messenger 
would arrive and say, ' Sire, king, whither are you march- 
ing? The heathen have disembarked from a countless 
fleet on the southern coast, and are ravaging the towns 
and villages, carrying fire and slaughter into every quar- 
ter.' The same.day another messenger would come run- 
ning and say, ' Sire, king, whither are you retreating ? A 
formidable army has landed in the west of England, and 
if you do not quickly turn your face toward them, they 
will think you are fleeing, and follow in your rear with 
fire and sword.' Again the same day, or on the morrow, 
another messenger would arrive, saying, ' What place, O 
noble chief, are you making for ? The Danes have made 
a descent in the north ; already they have burnt your 
mansions, even now they are sweeping away your goods ; 
they are tossing your young children on the points of their 
spears ; wives are forcibly dishonoured, others they have 
carried off with them.' Bewildered by such various 
tidings of bitter woe, both kings and people lost their 
vigour both of mind and body, and were utterly prostrated, 
so that even when they defeated the enemy, victory was 
not attended with its wonted triumphs, and supplied no 
confidence of safety for the future." 

It is not the purpose of this book to follow 
these Danish wars in other parts of the kingdom. 
Alfred obtained a respite; the enemy went north 
into Northumbria, into Lincolnshire, into Mercia; 
everywhere they were victorious. As for the 
King of Mercia, he deserted his country and his 
people, and went to Rome, where he died. His 
widow, Alfred's sister, remained, and did for the 
distracted country what a woman could. 

After three years' respite we hear of Alfred 
beginning the war again ; in 875 we find him 
taking up his brother Athelstan's work, and form- 
ing the nucleus of a fleet. Alfred is generally 
credited with the creation of a navy. It is, how- 
ever, quite certain that Athelstan, as we have 



86 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

seen, preceded him in recognizing the necessity 
of meeting the Danes on the sea, and that Alfred 
learned this lesson from his elder brother. If he 
could control the sea; if he could watch the 
estuaries, the rivers, and the landing-places ; he 
would be able effectually to keep off the enemy. 
He could not hope to do this except by slow de- 
grees, but he began in 875, with a small fleet, 
intercepting and fighting a Danish squadron of 
seven ships, one of which he took, putting the 
rest to flight. 

In the following year the Danes attacked 
Wessex from the other side, the west, marching 
upon Wareham. Perhaps they designed to form 
an alliance with the Cornishmen ; perhaps they 
intended to make a diversion, and to strike terror 
into a part of the country previously secure; per- 
haps they were allured by the hope of plunder. 
My own theory is that the time had gone by 
when they wanted simply to plunder, to harry, 
to burn, to destroy; nor is it sufficient to consider 
that there was at Wareham a rich and flourishing 
nunnery; the time for revenge upon the Chris- 
tians for the persecution by Charlemagne had 
also gone by. The Danes, I am persuaded, were 
now seriously intent upon the much greater and 
more important business of completing the con- 
quest of England by that of Wessex; the rest of 
the country they already occupied ; Wessex as 
yet held out. Surely it is unintelligible that with 
such a prize as this almost within their grasp 
they should be turned aside by the prospect of 
plundering a nunnery. The condition of the 
Saxons and the strength of the enemy are shown 
by the sequel. Alfred could not turn them out, 
yet they could not overrun the country as they 



ALFRED'S WARS. 87 

had overrun Mercia : " The king made peace with 
the army," the Chronicle tells us. "They deliv- 
ered to the king hostages from among the most 
distinguished men of the army, and they swore 
oaths to him on the holy ring, which they would 
never before do to any nation, that they would 
speedily depart from the kingdom. Notwith- 
standing this, that part of the army which was 
horsed stole away by night from the fortress "— 
i.e. the fortified camp at Wareham — " to Exeter." 

The things that follow show the perfidy, the 
courage, the audacity of an enemy who fought 
not according to rules, but in order to win, taking 
every advantage. Part of the Danish force was 
in Exeter, part in their camp at Wareham, when 
winter came on, and military operations had to 
cease. The country in winter being impossible 
for the march of armies, for camping out, for the 
conveyance of munitions and provisions, either 
by waggons or by pack-horses, both sides sat 
down and waited. There were, however, places 
where operations could be carried on in winter; 
these places, as we shall see, had not escaped the 
notice of the Danes, whose leaders seem to have 
had a fine eye for situation. 

The Danes at Wareham sent for reinforce- 
ments. It was, however, a regular thing for one 
expedition, at least, to be fitted out in Denmark 
for the conquest of England ; the only uncertainty 
was the place of landing. This year they resolved 
on sending their reinforcements to Wareham. 
Their landing-place was probably Poole or Swan- 
age. Between Swanage and Weymouth there runs a 
lofty wall of cliffs, against which many tall ships 
have been driven and wrecked. In the midst of the 
cliffs is the small and safe cove of Lulworth, of 



88 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

which the Danes probably knew nothing. Their 
fleet of 1 20 ships, all manned with warriors, sailed 
down the Channel in safety — one believes that it 
was in the spring or early summer — almost as far 
as their destination. Then arose a mighty storm ; 
the ships were driven before the wind past Poole 
Harbour, past Swanage Bay, along and under the 
dreadful cliffs. One by one the frail light craft 
became unmanageable, and were driven against 
these walls, where they broke up and were scat- 
tered. The whole of this great fleet, with its 
army of many thousands was wrecked, and the 
men were drowned. No greater misfortune had 
ever happened to the Danes in their many inva- 
sions. The force at Wareham, finding themselves 
cut off from help and from provisions, sallied 
forth, evaded Alfred, and reached Exeter in safety. 
This city was remarkable as being perhaps 
alone among the cities of England, amicably oc- 
cupied by Welsh and Saxons alike. It has been 
urged that the Danes in going there did not break 
their pledge to depart out of Alfred's realm, be-: 
cause Exeter was beyond his boundaries. That 
is not so. The frontier of Wessex was extended 
as far as the river Tamar, and the supremacy of 
Wessex covered the whole of Cornwall (Freeman, 
i. p. 42). Exeter was Alfred's city. However, 
the Danes got there, and as they did everywhere, 
they strengthened their camp with ditches and a 
stockade. Here they were safe, except for an 
important want, that of provisions. Alfred could 
not take their stronghold, but he could, and did, 
blockade them and cut off the supplies. It is easy 
to understand that they were in a hostile country. 
The people would bring in nothing. The Danes 
depended upon the success of plundering, sallies, 



ALFRED'S WARS. 89 

and forays, and they were met everywhere by 
Alfred. They did not surrender, but they entered 
into negotiations, gave hostages and took oaths; 
and so they retired, leaving Wessex free from 
their presence, and went north into Mercia, their 
own by right of conquest. Then, secure for the 
time, the Wessex fyrd was disbanded, and returned 
every man to his own place. 

Winter fell upon the country. This meant, to 
repeat, the cutting off of communications, the 
isolation of villages, the impossibility of doing 
anything. But the Danes had no such isolation 
to face ; their forces were in winter quarters, but 
they were always ready to go anywhere or to do 
anything that was demanded of them. 

The town of Chippenham (the " Place of the 
Market ") was, as its name imports, a trading 
centre of the Saxons ; it was also a royal resi- 
dence. It stands on the river Avon, which, to the 
Danes, was as good as a modern highroad. It is 
surrounded by chalk hills and downs, which, even 
in winter, were possible for the movements of 
troops. Contrary to all custom and precedent, 
the Danes broke up their winter quarters, and, 
moving west, protected from observation by the 
cold and dark winter days, they suddenly appeared 
before Chippenham, seized it, and made it their 
headquarters. Then,. as the historian says, " They 
spread over the country like locusts, and, there 
being no one able to resist them, they took pos- 
session of it for themselves." 

Wessex was taken by storm and by surprise. 
Concerning the details of this terrible winter we 
have few. It was a time of ravaged farms, burned 
villages, churches and monasteries destroyed, 
towns sacked. " Many of the people," the Anglo- 



90 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

Saxon Chronicle says, "were driven across the 
seas; the remainder, the greater part, were sub- 
dued and forced to obey." Those who fled across 
the sea were the thanes and the better sort, with 
those of the priests and monks who escaped the 
general massacre. No such visitation is recorded 
in English history, unless, perhaps, William the 
Conqueror's ruthless lesson in the north ; nor can 
we realize the condition of the country and the 
people after this wave of savage conquest had 
passed over it. Nor, again, can we so much as 
surmise what Alfred was doing to stem the torrent. 
Whatever he attempted was, it is certain, a failure. 
He probably tried to raise the fyrd, but could not 
summon the men on account of the frequent 
bands of the enemy; nor could the men come to 
him, because many of them were murdered, and 
the rest received no summons, and the only ways 
that were tolerable were held by the enemy. 
Black as night was the prospect. Wessex had 
fallen, as Mercia, Anglia, Northumbria had fallen. 
The conquest of the country seemed complete; 
to the Danes themselves it seemed complete. 
The king had disappeared ; there was no longer 
any army in the field. From the Tamar to Severn, 
from the Thames to the seaboard, there was no 
longer any resistance ; there was no longer any 
opposition possible. 

The king had disappeared. No doubt he was 
across the sea, making his way to Rome, there to 
join his brother-in-law, Burhred of Mercia. The 
Danes had nothing more to do but to divide the 
lands, as they had already done in other parts of 
England, and to settle down. 

One cannot choose but inquire what would 
have been the consequences to the country had 



ALFRED'S WARS. 9 1 

the Danish conquest been actually complete. Of 
course, such speculations are quite futile. The 
first result would have been the entire destruc- 
tion of the Saxon religion, learning, arts, and 
civilization. The Danes had much in common 
with their kin as regards institutions, but they 
were many centuries behind them in all other 
respects. As with the Saxons, the conversion to 
Christianity, absolutely necessary before any fur- 
ther advance could be made, would have to be 
done all over again, with the re-introduction of 
learning, the teaching of the arts, and the re- 
newal of communication with other nations. On 
the other hand, the Danes were a quick-witted 
race; they had not exterminated the Saxons — 
they would have learned from them. Would they 
have formed a single homogeneous, powerful na- 
tion ? Woul'd they have developed and advanced 
on lines similar to those which have made Eng- 
land great and the mother of nations? 

Alfred had not fled across the seas; he was 
in a fastness of his own, waiting, watching, and 
designing. Alone among his people, he had not 
lost hope. If we consider the overwhelming odds 
against him — the whole country in the hand of 
the enemy, his own people harried, scattered, 
murdered, terror-stricken, isolated — that he still 
retained hope is most wonderful. I am not one 
of those who regard Alfred as a saint; he w r as 
purely human, of this world, but he was a man of 
profound faith, who lived habitually, as far as he 
could, up to the standard of his faith, and I can- 
not but acknowledge that he was supported, 
comforted, sustained by his religious faith. We 
need not, unless we choose, believe all the stories 
that are told about his faith, but the fact remains 



9 2 



THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 



that God and his Saviour, the saints, the angels, 
the Church, were always living with him and in 
him, directing him and ruling his thoughts. 

Some of the stories are childish, as that about 
the cakes; some are clearly mythical, as of the 
visit to the Danish camp in the disguise of a 
minstrel. One, however, stands out clear and 
distinct. It appears to me to have been a 
waking dream, the vision of one whose mind, 
sorely tried, was open to visions and to dreams. 
It is a story from the lips of St. Cuthbert, and 
has been put into the following shape by 
Freeman : — 

" Now, it came to pass on a day that all Alfred's folk 
were gone out to fish, save only Alfred himself, and his 
wife, and one servant whom he loved. And there came 
a pilgrim to the king, and begged for food, and the king 
said to his servant — 

" ' What food have we in the house ? ' 

" And his servant answered, ' My lord, we have in the 
house but one loaf, and a little wine.' 

" Then the king gave thanks to God, and said, ' Give 
half of the loaf and half of the wine to this poor pilgrim.' 

" So the servant did as his lord commanded him, and 
gave to the pilgrim half of the loaf and half of the wine, 
and the pilgrim gave great thanks to the king. And 
when the servant returned, he found the loaf whole, and 
the wine as much as there had been aforetime. And he 
greatly wondered ; and he wondered, also, how the pil- 
grim had come into the isle, for that no man could come 
there save by water, and the pilgrim had no boat. 

" And the king greatly wondered also. And at the 
ninth hour came back the folk who had gone to fish. 
And they had their boats full offish, and they said — 

" ' Lo, we have caught this day more fish than in all 
the three years we have tarried in this island.' 

" And the king was glad, and he and his folk were 
merry, yet he pondered much on that which had come to 



ALFRED'S WARS. 93 

pass. And when night came, the king went to bed with 
Ealhswytha, his wife. And the lady slept, but the king 
lay awake and thought of all that had come to pass by 
day. And presently he saw a great light, like the bright- 
ness of the sun, and he saw an old man with black hair, 
clothed in priest's garments, and with a mitre on his 
head, and holding in his right hand a book of the gospels, 
adorned with gold and gems. And the old man blessed 
the king, and the king said unto him, ' Who art thou ? ' 

" And he answered, ' Alfred, my son, rrjoice ; for I 
am he to whom thou didst this day give thine alms, and 
I am called Cuthbert, the soldier of Christ. Now, be 
strong and very courageous, and be of joyful heart, and 
hearken diligently to the things which I say unto thee ; 
for henceforth I will be thy shield and thy friend, and I 
will watch over thee and over thy sons after thee. And 
now I will tell thee what thou must do. Rise up early in 
the morning, and blow thine horn thrice, that thy enemies 
may hear it and fear, and by the ninth hour thou shalt 
have around thee five hundred men harnessed for the 
battle. And this shall be a sign unto thee that thou 
mayest believe. And after seven days thou shalt have of 
God's gift and my help all the folk of this land gathered 
unto thee upon the mount that is called Assandun 
(Ethandune). And thus shalt thou fight against thine 
enemies, and doubt not that thou shalt overcome them. 
Be thou, therefore, glad of heart, and be strong and very 
courageous, and fear not, for God hath given thine ene- 
mies into thine hand. And He hath given thee also this 
land, and the kingdom of thy fathers, to thee and to thy 
sons' sons after thee. Be thou faithful to me and to my 
folk, because unto thee is given all the land of Albion. 
Be thou righteous, because thou art chosen to be the 
King of all Britain. So may God be merciful unto thee, 
and I will be thy friend, and none of thine enemies shall 
be able to overcome thee.' 

" Then was King Alfred glad at henrt, and he was 
strong and very courageous, for that he knew that he 
would overcome his enemies by the help of God and St. 
Cuthbert his patron. So in the morning he arose, and 
sailed to the land, and blew his horn three times, and 



94 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

when his friends heard it they were glad, and when his 
enemies heard it they feared. And by the ninth hour, 
according to the word of the Lord, there were gathered 
unto him five hundred men of the bravest and dearest of 
his friends. And he spake unto them, and told them all 
that God had said unto him by the mouth of His servant 
Cuthbert ; and he told them that, by the gift of God and 
the help of St. Cuthbert, they would overcome their ene- 
mies and win back their own land. And he bade them, 
as St. Cuthbert had taught him, to fear God always, and 
to be always righteous towards all men. And he bade 
his son Edward, who was by him, to be faithful to God 
and St. Cuthbert, and so he should always have the vic- 
tory over his enemies. So they went forth to battle, and 
smote their enemies and overcame them, and King Alfred 
took the kingdom of all Britain, and he ruled well and 
wisely over the just and the unjust for the rest of his 
days." 

In the midst of the great marsh of Sedge- 
more, now intersected by drains and ditches, there 
rises, as one drives from Bridgwater to Langport, 
a low but well-defined hill out of the flat. This 
hill is Athelney; and here, amidst the swamps, 
impenetrable save to the country folk who knew 
the way, and protected from the enemy by its 
agues and fevers, Alfred found a place of refuge 
for himself, his queen, his children, and a small 
following. The Chronicle says that he con- 
structed a fortress there. It may very well be 
that he had learned the importance of a stockade 
from the Danes. He could depend upon no 
other help than that of the men of Somerset, a 
folk of the forest and the moor, a fisher folk, a 
rough wild people, who were not daunted by the 
superior numbers of the enemy, nor by the terror 
of their name, nor by their victorious invasion of 
the whole county. 



Jiilf 1; t : l 



ii, :| li ■■■!, 



His. 




q6 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

Alfred, however, remained in Athelney until 
six weeks after Easter, which brings us to the 
month of May or June. He was not wholly in- 
active; he was continually leading sallies against 
the enemy, surprising bodies of them, cutting 
them off, and coming upon them unexpectedly. 
It is also reasonable to suppose that he was send- 
ing out messengers to call only the fyrd, wherever 
there was a chance of finding men still living and 
ready to obey the summons. The renewal of 
hostilities was not altogether the work of the 
king; had he not been backed by the tenacity, 
the obstinacy of a people who knew not when 
they were beaten, he would have effected nothing. 
The leader of men, even if he be a Napoleon or a 
Hannibal, is dependent on the courage of his 
men. Then there came good news to Athelney. 
A Danish fleet of twenty-three ships had come 
from South Wales, where they had wintered, to 
the coast of Devonshire, and on landing the 
enemy had been met and totally defeated, with 
the loss of more than eight hundred men, the 
death of the leader, and the capture of the ban- 
ner called the " Raven." 

V In the same year the brother of Hingwar and Half- 
dene, with twenty-three ships, after much slaughter of 
the Christians, came from the country of Demetia, where 
he had wintered, and sailed to Devon, where, with twelve 
hundred others, he met with a miserable death, being 
slain while committing his misdeeds, by the king's ser- 
vant, before the Castle of Cynuit (Kynwith), into which 
many of the king's servants, with their followers, had fled 
for safety. The pagans, seeing that the castle was alto- 
gether unprepared and unfortified, except that it had 
walls in our fashion, determined not to assault it, because 
it was impregnable and secure on all sides, except the 
eastern, as we ourselves have seen, but they began to 



ALFRED'S WARS. 97 

blockade it, thinking that those who were inside would 
soon surrender either from famine or want of water, for 
the castle had no spring near it. But the result did not 
fall out as they expected ; for the Christians, before they 
began to suffer from want, inspired by Heaven, judging it 
much better to gain victory or death, attacked the pagans 
suddenly in the morning, and from the first cut them 
down in great numbers, slaying also their king, so that 
few escaped to their ships ; and there they gained a very 
large booty, and amongst other things the standard called 
' Raven ; ' for they say that the three sisters of Hingwar 
and Hubba, daughters of Lodobroch, wove that flag and 
got it ready in one day. They say, moreover, that in 
every battle, wherever the flag went before them, if they 
were to gain the victory a live crow would appear flying 
on the middle of the flag ; but if they were doomed to be 
defeated it would hang down motionless, and this was 
flften proved to be so." 

The loss of this magic banner was, no doubt, 
a grievous discouragement to the Danes. I have 
no doubt that by this loss and by the reverses — 
the unexpected reverses — which followed, they 
were prepared for the strange and sudden sur- 
render which followed. 

Alfred met his newly raised army near Stour- 
ton, in Wiltshire. A modern tower, called Alfred's 
Tower, has been built to commemorate the awak- 
ening of the people. They came with renewed 
hope and with renewed courage to be led once 
more by the young king, in whom neither hope 
nor courage had ever faltered, Alfred made no 
stay at Stourton. The day after the meeting he 
led his forces to a place called Iglea (Hey), per- 
haps near Melksham, perhaps Leigh, now West- 
bury, Wilts, and on the following day to Ethan- 
dune, near Eddington, now a village on the east 
of Westbury. Here may be seen at the present 
7 



98 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

day a camp covering twenty-three acres of 
ground called Bratton Castle, formed in part by a 
double rampart in some places thirty-six feet 
high. This place is said to have been the en- 
trenchment to which the Danes retreated after 
the battle of Ethandune. The battle continued 
during the whole day, ending with the flight of 
the Danes and the slaughter of a great number. 
All the Danes who did not take refuge in this 
fort were killed, and their cattle and everything 
with them were seized by the Saxons. The 
Danes had been often beaten in battle; victory 
or defeat was uncertain, it was the end they 
looked to, and if they could renew their struggle 
they cared little for a repulse. But on this occa- 
sion their plight was desperate, for Alfred in- 
vested the camp. They seem to have been unable 
to sally out by day, or, after their favourite de- 
vice, to creep out by night and escape. Was it 
the loss of the " Raven " which weighed down 
their hearts ? I think so, and the comparison of 
Alfred's God with their own. They had no pro- 
visions. After a fortnight they sued for peace. 

" When he had been there fourteen days, the pagans, 
driven by famine, cold, fear, and last of all by despair, 
asked for peace, on the condition that they should give 
the king as many hostages as he pleased, but should 
receive none of him in return, in which form they had 
never before made a treaty with any one. The king, hear- 
ing that, took pity upon them, and received such hostages 
as he chose ; after which the pagans swore, moreover, 
that they would immediately leave the kingdom ; and their 
king, Guthrun, promised to embrace Christianity, and re- 
ceive Baptism at King Alfred's hands. All of which 
articles he and his son fulfilled as they had promised. 
For after seven weeks Guthrun, king of the pagans, with 
thirty men chosen from the army, came to Alfred at a 



ALFRED'S WARS. 



99 



place called Aller, near Athelney, and there King Alfred, 
receiving him as his son by adoption, raised him up from 
the holy laver of Baptism on the eighth day, at a royal 
villa named Wedmore, where the holy chrism was poured 
upon him. After his Baptism he remained twelve nights 
with the king, who, with all his nobles, gave him many 
line houses." 

It is, therefore, certain that Alfred was com- 
plete master of the situation. Had he chosen, 
he might have massacre'd the whole army; it was 
better statesmanship to let them go with such 
pledges as they would give, and, not trusting to 
their promises, to bind them to the victors by the 
tie of conversion and Baptism. Guthrun was bap- 
tized : the rite was the beginning of a new order. 

Then was made the Treaty of Wedmore, thus 
presented by Stubbs — 

" This is the peace that King Alfred and King 
Guthrun, and the wise men of all the English nation, 
and all the people that are in East Anglia (England), 
have all ordained and with oaths confirmed, for them- 
selves and for their descendants, as well for born as 
for unborn, who reck of God's mercy or of ours. 

" Concerning our land boundaries ; up on the Thames, 
and then up on the Lea, and along the Lea unto its source, 
then right to Bedford, then up on the Ouse and Watling 
Street. . . . 

" There is this : If a man be slain, we estimate all 
equally dear, English and Danish, at eight half-marks 
of pure gold ; except the ceorl who resides on rent (gafol) 
land and their freedmen (liesings) ; they also are equally 
dear, either at two hundred shillings. . . . 

" And if a king's thegn be accused of manslaying, if 
he dare to clear himself, let him do that with twelve king's 
thegns. If any one accuse that man who is of less degree 
than the king's thegn, let him clear himself with eleven of 
his equals, and witfi one king's thegn. And so in even- 
suit which may be for more than four mancuses. And 

FC. 



TOO THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

if he dare not, let him pay for it threefold, as it may be 
valued. 

" And that every man know his warrantor for men, 
and for horses, and for oxen. . . . 

" And we all ordained on that day that the oaths were 
sworn, that neither bond nor free might go to the host 
without leave, no more than any of them to us. But if it 
happens that from necessity any of them will have traffic 
with us or we with them, with cattle and with goods, that 
is to be allowed on this wise : the hostages be given in 
pledge of peace, and as evidence whereby it may be 
known that the party has a clean back." 

This was not a final settlement between Dane 
and Saxon, but it was a temporary measure of re- 
lief, and for a time at least, the land had peace. 
The "army" went to Cirencester, where they re- 
mained a whole year, after which they went on to 
East Anglia, where they began to parcel out the 
land as they had done already in Northumbria. 
Observe that the more the Danes settled down, 
even though reinforcements arrived every year, 
the more unwilling they became to carry on the 
old predatory warfare ; in other words, the stronger 
they became in their settlements, the better it was 
for parts like Wessex, in which they had no settle- 
ment. 

Fighting, perhaps, never wholly abandoned, 
began again in 882, when Alfred, who had been 
maturing his plans for the creation of a fleet, en- 
gaged the enemy — no doubt a small army, who 
knew nothing about the Treaty of Wedmore — by 
sea, captured two ships, slew their crews, and 
took the rest prisoners. In 884 another " army " 
came over from France, where they had been on 
a plundering raid. It is evident that fresh armies 
would continue to come over, so long as there 
was the chance of land to be conquered and held. 



ALFRED'S WARS. iol 

Guthrun's Treaty bound none but himself and 
his own followers. This new army divided into 
two, one half going over to France, and the other 
half remaining to lay siege to Rochester. 

" Before the gate of the town the pagans suddenly 
erected a strong- fortress, but yet they were unable to take 
the city, because the citizens defended themselves bravely, 
until King Alfred came up to help them with a large 
army. Then the pagans abandoned their fortress, and 
all their horses, which they had brought with them out 
of France, and leaving behind them in the fortress the 
greater part of their prisoners, on the arrival of the king 
fled immediately to their ships, and the Saxons immedi- 
ately seized on the prisoners and horses left by the pagans ; 
and so the pagans, compelled by stern necessity, returned 
the same summer to France." 

In the same year Alfred's fleet was active, but 
not with the same success. He sent it from Kent 
to the coast of East Anglia, where the Danish 
fleet was attacked and destroyed; but while the 
sailors were resting after the fight, the Danes fell 
upon them and gained a victory. In the same 
year the Danes of East Anglia broke their treaty 
of peace. 

Whether they kept it or not the position of 
Alfred was now far better than before the Treaty 
of Wedmore. The seven years of comparative 
respite had been occupied by Alfred in the con- 
solidation of his realm, the construction of his 
fleet, and the reform of his army. He had also 
rebuilt London, and repaired the walls. 

For twelve years the great trading City of 
London — a Mercian City — had been in the hands 
of the Danes. The same causes which made it a 
desolate and deserted place when the Saxons came 
over had operated with the same effect by the 



102 THE STORY Ob KING ALFRED. 

hands of the Danes. Communications inland 
were cut off; there were no caravans laden with 
exports making their way from all parts to the 
port of London ; the river was filled with the ene- 
my's ships, so that no merchants could get up to 
the port ; trade of every kind was destroyed, and 
therefore the very existence of London was de- 
stroyed as well. It needs very little considera- 
tion to perceive that when the Danes made their 
winter quarters at London, it was in a city of de- 
serted streets, a port of deserted quays, a place 
whence all but the people of the " service " — the 
slaves, the fisher folk, the servants — had fled. This 
humble folk the Danes spared, for their own use. 
In 851, twenty years before their occupation, they 
had taken London by storm, and, of course, 
sacked it. The City, therefore, had been decay- 
ing in 883 for thirty years. No chronicle and no 
traditions remain of that period of decay and 
ruin; there are only two or three brief entries in 
the Chronicle to show that the Danes took the 
place by storm, that they presently made it their 
winter quarters, and that Alfred took it from them 
and repaired it. There is, however, one signifi- 
cant entry which seems to indicate the complete 
ruin of the City. In 879 the Danes settled down 
at Fulham. Why at Fulham, since London, one 
would think, would be a place so much more con- 
venient for an army ? In 883, however, Alfred 
recovered London. The Chronicle describes the 
event in very doubtful words: " Thanks be to 
God, they largely obtained the object of their 
prayer after the vow." However, three years 
later it is made quite clear that London was in 
his possession, for he ''repaired" the town, and 
" all the English submitted to him, except those 



ALFRED'S WARS. 103 

who were under the bondage of the Danes, and 
he committed the care of the town to Ethelred, 
Earl of Mercia," and his brother-in-law. Observe 
that he .did not seize the City and call it his own, 
as he might have done ; he recognized that it was 
a Mercian City, and he conciliated the Mercians 
by leaving them in nominal possession of the 
place. 

He found London a scene of desolation ; the 
walls broken down, the gates destroyed, the houses 
and streets in ruins, the quays — they were of tim- 
ber laid on piles — rotting away, the bridge broken 
down ; no vessels in the port, no merchants, and 
no trade. But by this time he had learned the im- 
portance of fortifications, and, like the Romans 
after the massacre by Boadicea, he recognized the 
enormous strategic importance of the place. Not 
the least of Alfred's achievements is the estab- 
lishment of strongholds. He repaired the walls, 
he made new gates ; those of Newgate and Bishops- 
gate he did not build on the old ruinous founda- 
tions, but put one more to the south and the other 
more to the west. He invited foreign merchants 
to return, and re-opened the communications with 
such ports as were not occupied by the Danes. 
The effect of this work was not only the revival 
of trade and the return of prosperity to London, 
but also the creation of a stronghold which was 
never afterwards taken, although it was often 
threatened by the combined forces of Dane and 
Norseman. The independence, the prosperity, the 
safety of London are due to Alfred's prescience 
and wisdom. 

We are approaching the end of Alfred's wars 
and also, alas ! of Alfred's life, which was one 
long combat. 



104 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

The last years of battle are simply but finely 
described in the Chronicle. In the year 893 a 
great army of Danes came over from Boulogne. 

" That same year the armies from among the East 
Anglians and from among the Northumbrians harassed 
the land of the West Saxons, chiefly on the south coast, 
by praedatory bands ; most of all by their esks, which they 
had built many years before. Then King Alfred com- 
manded long ships to be built to oppose the esks ; they 
were full-nigh twice as long as the others ; some had sixty 
oars, and some had more ; they were both swifter and 
steadier, and also higher than the others. They were 
shapen neither like the Frisian nor the Danish, but so, as 
it seemed to him, they would be most efficient. Then, 
some time in the same year, there came six ships to the 
Isle of Wight, and there did much harm, as well as in 
Devon and elsewhere on the sea-coast." 

Then came the end. Three years later Alfred 
died. The year of his death is disputed. Let us 
leave the controversy to scholars; it is enough 
for our purpose that Alfred had peace for a brief 
respite before his death. 

If we look back upon the thirty years war of 
Alfred with the Danes and ask ourselves what it 
meant, and why it should be remembered a thou- 
sand years later, and what it did for the country, 
I suppose that for a soldier the meagre details of 
battle after battle are disappointing; in broad 
outline, however, we can learn what is more im- 
portant. The campaigns can be generally fol- 
lowed, because we know the natural features, and 
we know where forest, marsh, and moor interposed 
to divert the course of an army, or presented an 
impenetrable obstacle. 

The broad outlines are these — 

1. The greater part of Saxon England, prac- 



ALFRED'S WARS. 105 

tically the whole except the south, was in the 
hands of the Danes. 

2. No help could be looked for from any oilier 
part of England. 

3. The irruption of the invaders seemed to 
know no limit. Even when they were hopelessly 
beaten, ships by the hundred were crossing the 
seas, containing reinforcements. 

4. Every victory was won with great loss, and 
every victory seemed barren. 

5. No treaty was kept; no pledge, however 
solemn, was held sacred. 

Add to these causes of demoralization certain 
other facts, as, for instance, that there was no 
standing army as we understand it. 

The king had always at his command the 
small body of landowners, called the gesit/is, or 
thanes. They were bound to obey the king's 
summons to join the host; they were well armed, 
and clad in mail ; they were of courage equal to 
the Danes, and in tenacity their superiors, but 
there were few of them. The rest of the people 
who could also be called out to constitute the 
fyrd, or the militia, but only by the Witan, were 
without armour, and imperfectly armed. Now, it 
would appear that all the Danes were well armed ; 
but, of course, their leaders better than the rank 
and file. 

The Saxons had no cavalry. This seems in- 
credible, because the country possessed horses in 
plenty, which were seized by the Danes. If the 
king rode, his horse was held for him outside the 
battle, while he himself advanced on foot to the 
forefront, the most dangerous post in the field. 

The Saxons had no fortified places. I have 
already dwelt upon the fact that they disliked 



Io6 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

the confinement of walls; they liked the open 
air ; they wanted to meet their enemy in the 
field, and not to fight him from the shelter of 
walls. They had not, as yet, arrived at any 
knowledge of the vital importance of strong- 
holds. 

The Saxons had no fleet ; they had forgotten 
their old skill in the building of ships, and their 
old love of the sea; they had no ships; they had 
no sailors. 

How did Alfred meet these difficulties ? In 
the case of the army we can only arrive at the 
facts in this respect by considering the work of 
his son Edward. He enlarged the thanehood ; 
he admitted any ceorl who had "five hides of 
land, a helm, a mail-shirt, and a sword ornamented 
with gold;" any ceorl who had the military 
equipment, even without the land; and every 
merchant who fared three times across the seas 
at his own expense. In other words, not only 
did Alfred enlarge the permanent army, but he 
began the custom, which has been of incalculable 
advantage to the country, of recruiting contin- 
ually into the ranks of the noble class. We may 
understand the jealousy with which the old nobil- 
ity regarded the new-comers. It is the vice of 
an aristocracy that they cannot endure an exten- 
sion of their numbers. They would form a class 
absolutely separate, and not to be confused with 
those below. They have always tried to become 
such a class; in Germany, in France, in Austria, 
in Spain, they succeeded in keeping themselves 
aloof for many centuries. In England they ad- 
mitted no new-comer for hundreds of years. 
After the wholesale rise of the new families in the 
sixteenth century they tried to close their ranks 



ALFRED'S WARS. 1 07 

again. In the eighteenth century the English 
class of nobles held in their own hands not only 
the Government of the country, but every post of 
dignity and position outside the Church and the 
Law. The House of Lords was theirs, the House 
of Commons was theirs, they were the heads of 
all the administrative departments, they com- 
manded the armies and the fleets, they com- 
manded the regiments and the ships, they re- 
ceived all the national distinctions, they held all 
the places, they created continually new sinecures. 
It will be one of the great glories of the nine- 
teenth century that it effected the breaking-down 
of this caste; that it admitted freely new-comers, 
and created every year new nobles ; that it took 
the greater part of the power out of aristocratic 
hands, and threw the national distinctions open 
to the whole of the people. One hopes that in 
describing the great changes due to this cause, 
the historian will not fail to notice that Queen 
Victoria and her Cabinets had been anticipated 
by Alfred and his Witan. 

It was, again, Alfred who first among the 
Saxons recognized the value of strongholds. On 
this point I would quote the words of Mr. Oman 
in Bowker's " Alfred." 

" Not only were the towns encouraged to surround 
themselves with strong ditches and palisades, but ' burhs ' 
— moated mounds girt with concentric rings of ditch 
and stockade — were erected at strategical points. Lon- 
don recovered from the East Anglian Danes in 886, was 
made far stronger than it had ever been before by the 
patching up of its ancient Roman walls. It was filled 
with a new colony of warlike settlers, and became an out- 
post of Wessex to the north of the Thames. The conse- 
quences of the fact that the larger English towns were no 
longer open, but well fortified, are clearly seen in Alfred's 



108 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

later wars. The Danes cannot capture important places 
at the first rush, as they had done with York, Winchester, 
and London thirty years before. They have to lay siege 
to them in full form, and always before the siege is many 
days old the indefatigable king appears with an army of 
relief. The invaders had then either to fight, to take to 
their ships, or to stockade themselves in their entrench- 
ments and suffer a leaguer themselves. Generally they 
chose the second alternative, as at Rochester in 886, 
when they abandoned their horses, their stores, and all 
their heavy plunder, and sailed off the moment that the 
army of succour came in sight. The same scene occurred 
at Exeter in 894. The importance of fortified places in 
keeping the Danes employed till the fyrd could assemble 
can hardly be exaggerated. The only stronghold which 
did not serve its purpose was a certain ' work only half 
constructed in which there were some few countryfolk ' 
near Appledore in Kent. This fell before an attack of 
the ' Great Army ' in 893. 

" It would seem that the system by which Alfred's 
' burns ' were maintained was not unlike that which 
Henry the Fowler employed in Germany a generation 
later. To each stronghold there was allotted, as it would 
appear, a certain number of ' hides ' of land in the sur- 
rounding region. All the thegns dwelling on these hides 
were responsible for the defence of the burh. Probably 
they were bound to build a house within it, and either to 
dwell there in person, or to place therein a substitute 
equally competent with themselves for military purposes. It 
would seem that the ' cnihten-guilds ' of London and sev- 
eral other places were the original associations of these 
military settlers whom Alfred and his immediate suc- 
cessors had placed in their burns." 

Asser is the chief authority for these state- 
ments : — 

"What shall I say of the cities and towns which he 
restored, and of others which he built where none had 
been before ? Of the royal halls and chambers wonder- 
fully erected by his command with stone and wood ? Of 



ALFRED'S WARS. 1 09 

the royal vills constructed of stone, removed from their 
old site, and handsomely rebuilt by the king's command 
in more fitting places ? " 

As regards the fleet, Alfred carried on the 
work begun by his brother Athelstan, after it had 
been suspended for some years. Athelstan's was 
an experiment : Alfred's was a piece of fixed pol- 
icy — he would have a fleet ; it was necessary for 
the repression of the invaders, and for a check to 
the reinforcements, by which the enemy, year after 
year, filled up the gaps in their ranks and increased 
in number. Alfred had none; he would have a 
fleet of ships, better, larger, swifter, than those 
of the Danes. 

Alfred saved Wessex first, but he saved Eng- 
land as well. But for that stubborn resistance, 
that keen eye, that active mind, the Saxons in 
this country would have become like the Britons 
in the fifth and sixth centuries — a conquered and 
a despised people, villains, ceorls, and slaves. In 
all the various races which make up the amalgam 
which we call English, there is none so valuable 
as that of Saxon, Jute, and Angle, who between 
them form the backbone of the country. One 
may admit the importance to this amalgam of the 
Celtic element too long ignored by ethnologists; 
one may admit to the full its value and influence 
in forming the national character ; one may also 
recognize the influence and importance of the 
Danes with, in a minor degree, that of those who 
came after — Norman, Fleming, French Huguenot, 
and the rest — but the predominant portion is the 
Saxon ; his is the language, his is the history, his 
are the institutions, his is the great king who 
made the future — the great and wonderful future — 
of the Saxon possible. 



HO THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

Then, again, let us repeat that while Alfred 
was the eye and the brain of the country, the 
captain and the pilot of the ship, he would have 
effected nothing but for the virtues — the great 
and manifold virtues — of his people. He knew 
them; they would follow if he led. Where his 
battle-axe rose and fell, gleaming in the sunlight, 
thither flocked his people. They were bulldogs 
for grip and tenacity ; being bidden to be of good 
cheer, their hopes revived. When Alfred led them 
they marched after him with confidence. If we 
honour and respect Alfred as a warrior, we must 
also honour and respect his followers, the name- 
less horde of the Wessex fyrd who fought and 
fell beside him. Alfred saved England, but his 
host saved Alfred. Their graves upon the battle- 
fields are long since levelled with the ground and 
clean forgotten and out of mind. It is a pity ; 
every fallen warrior's grave is like a finely dressed 
stone in a noble temple; one would like to have 
the name carved, imperishable, a name of honour, 
on these stones. They are all forgotten, every 
man ; but the name of Alfred sums up and repre- 
sents the virtues of the folk who, against fright- 
ful odds, were resolute for freedom. They fought 
that they themselves might be free ; they died 
that we might live. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III. 

The preceding chapter has shown the long continu- 
ance of the wars between Norsemen and Saxons, which 
began towards the end of the eighth century, and lasted 
throughout the whole of the following century. I have 
compiled the following Table from the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, in order to show the dates of the principal 



ALFRED'S WARS. Ill 

events and the places which were attacked by the Danes — 
written with notes on the civil wars between the English 
kingdoms. It will be observed, as regards the former, 
that, for a long time there is no method in the attacks of 
the pirates from the North. They begin with Northum- 
berland, because that was nearest to them. They turn 
their attention to other parts of the country. They land 
on Sheppey, at Charmouth, at Southampton ; they storm 
and sack London and Canterbury ; they land at Bridg- 
water, and so on. No part of the coast was safe from 
them. Evidently they inquire, one year, into places likely 
to prove profitable for plundering in years to follow. In 
course of time they find it unnecessary to go home for 
the winter. They make their winter quarters at some 
convenient place on the coast, easily fortified, as Thanet 
and Sheppey. There they form lasting settlements, from 
which they are never afterwards dislodged. In the final 
place they retain the lands they have settled, and here we 
find their descendants at the present day. 

A.D. 787. — The first ships of the Norsemen came to 
the country, and there was bloodshed. 

792. — The King of Mercia murdered the King of 
East Anglia, and the King of Northumbria was seized 
and slain. 

793. — The " heathen men " came over in force, and 
ravaged Lindisfarne with much slaughter. 

794. — They returned again to Northumberland, and 
after ravage and plunder, were wrecked by a tempest. 

796. — There was war between the kingdoms of 
Mercia and Kent. 

798. — There was a great battle in Northumberland. 

800. — Egbert succeeded to the crown of Wessex. 
In the same year there was a battle with the men of 
Wiltshire. 

806. — The King of the Northumbrians was driven 
from his throne. 

813. — Egbert laid waste West Wales. 

821. — A battle between the Welsh and the men of 
Devon. Defeat and death of the King of Mercia. East 
Anglia, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex submitted to Egbert. 

825.— The King of the Mercians slain in battlq. 



112 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

827. — Egbert completed the conquest of the country, 
and became Bretwalda. 

828. — Egbert invaded North Wales. 

832. — Sheppey ravaged by the heathen. 

833.— Egbert fought the Danes at Charmouth. 

835. — Egbert fought the united armies of Welsh and 
Danes. 

836. — Egbert died. 

837.— Fighting against the Danes at Southampton, 
and at Portland with the Danes. 

838.— Fighting against the Danes among the Marsh- 
men, and in Lincolnshire, East Anglia, and Kent. 

839.— Great slaughter at London, Canterbury, and 
Rochester. 

844. — Fighting against the Danes at the mouth of the 
Parret. 

851. — A great year of fighting. The men of Devon- 
shire fought the Danes at Wembury, near Plymouth. 
Athelstan, Alfred's eldest brother, fought them in ships ; 
but the Danes wintered in Thanet. They came, the same 
year, with 350 ships, up the Thames, took London and 
Canterbury by storm, defeated the King of the Mercians, 
and wepe then defeated, at Oakley, by Ethelwulf and his 
son Ethelbald. 

853. — Ethelwulf fought the North Welsh, and " made 
them obedient." The men of Kent and Surrey fought 
the Danes in Thanet. 

855. — The Danes wintered in Sheppey. 

860. — Storming of Winchester by the Danes. 

865. — Ravaging of Kent by the Danes. 

866. — Settlement of Danes in East Anglia. 

867. — Invasion of Yorkshire by the Danes. Battle 
before York, and defeat of the English. 

868. — The Danes took up their winter quarters in 
Mercia. Fighting before Nottingham. 

869. — The Danes spend a year at York. 

870. — Great victories for the Danes in East Anglia. 

871. — Battle of Ashdown. Nine battles fought in the 
south of England. 

872. — The Danes wintered in London. 

873. — The Danes wintered in Lindsey (Lincolnshire), 



ALFRED IN RELIGION. 113 

874.— The Danes wintered in Repton, and overran 
the whole of Mercia. 

875. — Alfred's .first fleet engaged the enemy. 

876. — Fighting at Wareham. 

877. — The Danes at Exeter. 

878. — Fighting in Wessex. Alfred at Athelney. 

880. — The Danes settled in East Anglia. 

883. — Alfred obtained possession of London. 

885. — Fighting at Rochester and off the mouth of the 
Stour. 

886. — Alfred repaired London. 

893-895. — Long and stubborn fighting. 

896. — Capture of the Danish ships. 

897.— Alfred's fleet. 

898-901. — Peace. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ALFRED IN RELIGION. 

The dominant aims of Alfred as a king might 
be arranged in the following order. First, secu- 
rity from the Dane, throughout his reign the only 
enemy of Wessex. For this purpose everything 
must be sacrified ; security was necessary for all 
that might follow. Next; in all societies of men 
there is one common basis : the society must be 
fed. For this purpose there must be security of 
cultivation ; the farm and the farmer must be pro- 
tected ; the people must be fed. The third aim 
was the cohesion of all the people one with an- 
other ; without the power of acting together, and 
the instinct of acting together as if nothing else 
was possible, there was no stability of order and 
security: the country would fall back to its for- 
mer condition of separate tribal communities, in 
8 



1 14 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

which there might be courage but no strength. 
This necessity involved the administration of 
justice with an equal hand, ruthless as regards the 
individual, but beneficent to the community. 

Security being provided for as far as was pos- 
sible, justice and the sense of justice being recog- 
nized, so that there would be no oppressions of 
one class by another, and the sense of community 
might be developed and strengthened, the next 
point of importance was that of religion. And 
first it must be the religion which ruled the whole 
of Western Europe. I do not suppose there was 
ever any question in Alfred's mind as to the truth 
of the dogmas in which he was educated ; the time 
was not yet arrived for these dogmas to be ques- 
tioned by him or his people. Apart, however, 
from the doctrine, it was essential for a country 
which sought advancement in civilization to be- 
long to the great family — Italian, Spanish, French, 
German, with all that their modern names signify 
— of Latin Christianity. The common faith was 
a bond which seems, indeed, to have held the 
nations together loosely enough, yet had more 
strength than we are perhaps ready to acknowl- 
edge ; it was a form of faith imposed upon the 
nations by the ecclesiastics, who rested their 
claims on the inspiration of councils and the 
authority of the Pope. So long as there was one 
supreme head of the Church acknowledged by all 
alike, there would be the same doctrine common 
to all ; the same doctrine, the same services, the 
same priesthood, the same ritual. The pilgrim 
on his way to the Holy Land was with his own 
spiritual kin so long as he found himself within 
the authority of the Pope; every church was a 
copy of the churches he had left behind; the 



ALFRED IN RELIGION. 115 

Mass sung in Venice was the same as that sung 
at Westminster. There were the same words, the 
same ceremonies, the same vestments, the same 
priests, to outward seeming. Of course, when the 
pilgrim was on the Byzantine side of Europe he 
was among strangers who marked differences of 
creed, unintelligible to the people, by differences 
of rites which they could understand. It was of 
the highest importance, indeed, that there should 
be a common creed and a common ritual. We 
have only to remember the wonderful heresies 
into which ignorant people fall whenever they 
reasoned out for themselves (being wholly with- 
out history, without learning, without power of 
formulating reason, or arriving at conclusions), 
to understand the Christian anarchy that would 
certainly have followed on premature separation 
from Rome. One man called himself the Christ, 
another preached vicarious flagellation for the 
sins of the people, another advocated free love, 
another created a new sect by a new statement of 
the Incomprehensible. There was no end to the 
fancies and the visions which were accepted as 
realities and served as foundations to new forms 
of faith. The modern example of Protestant na- 
tions shows also like absurdities into which per- 
sons of fair education may fall even at the present 
day. When, in a time when some education is 
within the reach of all, we find such forms of 
faith as the Jezreelites, the Perfectionists, the 
Oneida Community, with the narrow tenets of 
Baptists, Seventh Day Sabbatarians, Primitive 
Methodists, Plymouth Brethren ; when we read 
about the early Quakers, the Fifth Monarchy 
Men, the believers in Joanna Southcott and 
Muggleton, the Mormons, the Spiritualists, who 



Il6 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

never tire of getting messages without a single 
word of sense or help from the dead ; the horde 
of cranks, visionaries, and frauds; nay, the eccle- 
siastical madness which would destroy a vener- 
able Church for the sake of making a smell in a 
church ; when, I say, we consider these things, we 
cannot overrate the wisdom of those who kept 
the Christian Church together with one form of 
faith, one ritual, under one supreme head. In 
this way, and only in this way, would the people 
of Wessex be united with the family of nations 
which were slowly but surely advancing in civili- 
zation. 

The religion, therefore, which Alfred encour- 
aged was that whose earthly head was the Pope 
of Rome. The Teutonic mind is naturally in- 
clined to religion. Alfred had, therefore, a recep- 
tive material, capable of receiving impressions 
and of retaining them. Meantime a strange thing 
had happened. During the time of the Danish 
success, the Christian religion had been not only 
trampled upon but exterminated. Perhaps it 
seems incredible that in a few short years so 
much should have been destroyed and forgotten. 
We have, however, to consider a time of great 
ignorance. Among the common people there was 
nothing left to keep alive their faith. Every 
church, every religious house had been destroyed. 
Perhaps priests and deacons, monks and nuns, 
scholars and divines, had all been murdered, scat- 
tered, or driven across the seas. To the faithful, 
it seemed, when the monks gathered up the relics, 
as if their saints were carried away from them. 
The schools were broken up; the monastic libra- 
ries were burned with the houses which contained 
them. The boys of the thanes grew up without 



ALFRED IN RELIGION. 1 17 

the least tincture of learning or book-lore, the 
boys of the common folk without the instruction 
of the parish priest. Yet, it maybe objected, the 
memory of the religion would survive. Is that 
so certain? Consider the following case: In 
March of 1901 there appeared in the papers 
the copy of a report by a French Colonel. For 
many years he had been examining the con- 
scripts, asking them, among other things, what 
they knew of the war of 1870. They knew nothing 
— none of them knew anything; one or two thought 
that Bismarck was the German Emperor ; one or 
two had a hazy notion that there had been a war, 
and that France, on the whole, had come out of it 
badly ; even the conscripts from parts of France 
which were occupied by the enemy, which had 
felt all the humiliation and the bitterness of de- 
feat and conquest, knew nothing of the war. And 
this at a time when every rustic learns to read! 
But, observe, they do not read. How much more 
readily would things be forgotten when there was 
no reading, no educated class, no books, no news- 
papers, no libraries, no schools to teach, and no 
Church to instruct and to admonish ! 

Again, the minds of the people, Christianized 
only for two hundred years, were still full of the 
old pagan traditions. Christian or pagan, the 
Saxon remembered the faith of his ancestors, 
and was as ready to go back to it, if Christianity 
was taken out of the way, as were the people of 
London after their first conversion. It was a 
fierce and cruel religion, although it was full of 
imagination, as was to be expected of a people 
in whose minds the noblest poetry was slumber- 
ing. There were gods who created and invented ; 
gods who gave life and inspired love ; gods who 



Il8 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

sent the thunder and the storm; gods who 
brought the spring and the sunshine, the fruit 
and the harvest. There were evil gods — the gods 
of death, who killed men ; the gods of disease, 
who tortured men ; the gods of the sea and the 
river, who drowned men ; the gods of battle, who 
struck men with cowardice, and weighed down 
their hands so that they could not strike. There 
were humbler deities — spirits of the stream, the 
woods, and the hills — for the most part hostile to 
men and malignant, because in certain stages of 
civilization the unknown forces of nature present 
themselves as personal deities who are always 
hostile to man ; according to the Greek legend, 
for instance, he who met the great god Pan face 
to face fell down dead. They believed in raising 
spirits and in spectres, much as some of us do 
now ; they believed in witches and in witchcraft ; 
in magic and in charms; in love philtres; in 
divination; in lucky days. In a word, the Anglo- 
Saxon was full of the superstitions which belonged 
to his age. 

There was, however — I venture to read be- 
tween the lines — one saving clause. The Anglo- 
Saxon was not only afraid of the unknown, which 
caused him to invent malignant deities, but in his 
mind the God of Creation was stronger than the 
god of destruction. There is hope for a people 
while that belief survives. Long after he be- 
came a Christian the Saxon continued to retain his 
old beliefs under other names; he saw and con- 
versed in imagination with the old deities whom 
he had forsaken; they spoke to him in. the thun- 
der; he saw their forms in the flying clouds, in 
the splendour of the sunset ; he heard their 
whispers in the woods ; they came to him in 



ALFRED IN RELIGION. 119 

dreams. Religion to the Anglo-Saxon was a thing 
more real, more present, than it has ever been to 
any people except the Russian and the Jew. 

The king had to lead these people back to 
the Christian faith, and order matters so that 
by degrees, though not in his life, they should 
abandon their ancient superstitions, of which 
some remain even to the present day. 

Again, it was important that the war should 
be religious. No doubt Alfred firmly believed 
that the Danes represented the powers of dark- 
ness, and that his were the armies of the Lord. 
How far he impressed this belief upon his follow- 
ers I know not. To me, however, it seems as if 
the natural tenacity of the Saxon was doubled by 
his belief that he was fighting the battles of the 
Lord ; and as Mohammed's followers believed ; 
as the first Crusaders believed; as Cromwell's 
men believed ; as the men of the Mahdi believed ; 
so the men of the Wessex fyrd believed ; that the 
gates of Paradise stood wide open for those who 
fell against the Danes. Why was it that when 
the Danish chieftain Guthrun begged for terms 
of peace he consented to be baptized ? Surely in 
recognition that Alfred's God was stronger than 
his own. A common faith made peace and trea- 
ties of peace binding. 

Alfred's efforts in the cause of religion began 
as soon as the Danes were expelled, and con- 
tinued during the rest of his life with zeal un- 
abated. 

Hear the words of his biographer on this 
point : — 

" He attended the Mass and other daily services of 
religion ; he was frequent in psalm-singing and prayer, at 
the hours both of the day and the night. He also went 



120 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

to the churches, as we have already said, in the night- 
time to pray, secretly, and unknown to his courtiers. . . . 

" He would avail himself of every opportunity to pro- 
cure coadjutors in his good designs, to aid him in his 
strivings after wisdom, that he might attain to what he 
aimed at ; and, like a prudent bird, which, rising in sum- 
mer with the early morning from her beloved nest, steers 
her rapid flight through the uncertain tracks of ether, and 
descends on the manifold and varied flowers of grasses, 
herbs, and shrubs, essaying that which pleases most, that 
she may bear it to her home, so did he direct his eyes 
afar, and seek without that which he had not within, 
namely, in his own kingdom. 

" But God at that time, as some consolation to the 
king's benevolence, yielding to his complaint, sent certain 
lights to illuminate him, namely, Werefrith, Bishop of the 
Church of Worcester, a man well versed in Divine Scrip- 
ture, who, by the king's command, first turned the books 
of the ' Dialogues of Pope Gregory and Peter,' his disciple, 
from Latin into Saxon, and sometimes putting sense for 
sense, interpreted them with clearness and elegance. 
After him was Plegmund, a Mercian by birth, Archbishop 
of the Church of Canterbury, a venerable man, and en- 
dowed with wisdom ; Ethelstan also, and Werewulf, his 
priests and chaplains, Mercians by birth, and erudite, 
These four had been invited out of Mercia by King 
Alfred, who exalted them with many honours and powers 
in the kingdom of the West Saxons, besides the privi- 
leges which Archbishop Plegmund and Bishop Werefrith 
enjoyed in Mercia. By their teaching and wisdom the 
king's desires increased unceasingly, and were gratified," 

Here Asser makes a curious slip. For he 
tells us that Alfred as yet could not read, and 
this after he has told us the story about his 
mother and the illuminated volume. He wanted, 
however, more scholars. 

" Wherefore he sent messengers beyond the sea to 
Gaul, to procure teachers, and he invited from thence 
Grimbald, priest and monk, a venerable man and good 



ALFRED IN RELIGION. 121 

singer, adorned with every kind of ecclesiastical disci- 
pline and good morals, and most learned in Holy Scrip- 
ture. He also obtained from thence John, also priest and 
monk, a man of most energetic talents, and learned in all 
kinds of literary science, and skilled in many other arts. 
By the teaching of these men the king's mind was much 
enlarged, and he enriched and honoured them with much 
influence. . . . 

" Of his fixed purpose of holy meditation, which, in 
the midst of prosperity and adversity he never neglected, 
I cannot with advantage now omit to speak. For, 
whereas he often thought of the necessities of his soul, 
among the other good deeds to which his thoughts were 
night and day turned, he ordered that two monasteries 
should be built, one for monks at Athelney, which is a 
place surrounded by impassable marshes and rivers, 
where no one can enter but by boats, or by a bridge 
laboriously constructed between two other heights ; at 
the western end of which bridge was erected a strong 
tower of beautiful work, by command of the aforesaid 
king ; and in this monastery he collected monks of all 
kinds, from every quarter, and placed them therein. 

" For at first, because he had no one of his own na- 
tion, noble and free by birth, who was willing to enter 
the monastic life, except children, who could neither 
choose good nor avoid evil in consequence of their tender 
years ; because for many years previous the love of a 
monastic life had utterly decayed lrom that nation as well 
as from many other nations, though many monasteries 
still remain in that country ; yet, as no one directed the 
rule of that kind of life in a regular way, for what reason 
I cannot say, either from the invasions of foreigners, 
which took place so frequently both by sea and land, or 
because that people abounded in riches of every kind, 
and so looked with contempt on the monastic life. It 
was for this reason that King Alfred sought to gather 
monks of different kinds to place in the same monastery. 

" First he placed there as abbot, John the priest and 
monk, an old Saxon by birth, then certain priests and 
deacons from beyond the sea; of whom, finding that he 
had not as large a number as he wished, he procured as 



122 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

many as possible of the same Gallic race, some of whom, 
being children, he ordered to be taught in the same 
monastery, and at a later period to be admitted to the 
monastic habit. I have myself seen a young lad of 
pagan birth who was educated in that monastery, and by 
no means the hindmost of them all. . . . 

" Another monastery, also, was built by the same 
king as a residence for nuns, near the eastern gate of 
Shaftesbury ; and his own. daughter, Ethelgiva, was 
placed in it as abbess. With her many other noble 
ladies, bound by the rules of the monastic life, dwell in 
that monastery. These two edifices were enriched by 
the king with much land, as well as personal property." 

The Abbey of Athelney has now completely 
vanished. No trace remains either of the founda- 
tions or of the fortifications said to have been 
erected on the hill. The abbey is said to have 
been small, but of great magnificence. Relics 
and fragments have been from time to time dug 
up, including the famous Alfred jewel, now pre- 
served in the Bodleian at Oxford. Not far from 
Athelney is a knoll called Borough Bridge. It is 
higher and steeper than that of Athelney. There 
are evident marks of former fortifications. On 
the top are the remains of a cruciform church 
containing many details of an ancient character. 
From the base of the hill a causeway led to an- 
other knoll near Othery, on which was another 
fort. It has been suggested that Borough Bridge 
was the true site of Alfred's fortified place. I 
do not know whether the point has been investi- 
gated, but it seems certain that where the fortifi- 
cations were there would be the monastic house 
as well. 

The nunnery of Shaftesbury, on the other 
hand, had a much more glorious history. Alfred's 
daughter was, as we have seen, the first abbess. 



ALFRED IN RELIGION. 123 

Athelstan and Edmund Ironside were benefactors 
to the House. The body of Edward the Martyr 
was transferred here from Wanham by Dunstan. 
Pilgrims resorted to the tomb of the martyr, 
where miracles were continually wrought. In 
1001 Ethelred gave the nuns the town of Bradford 
for a retreat, if necessary, from the Danes. Canute 
died here. The abbey became one of the richest 
in England. After the Dissolution the build- 
ings were destroyed, and gradually razed to the 
ground. But in 1861 excavations brought to 
light some of the foundations and walls of the 
house. It would be interesting to continue these 
excavations, and to recover, if possible, the tombs 
of the Saxon princes and queens buried within 
the church. 

The extraordinary difficulty in finding monks 
for this new monastery is very significant. The 
life of prayer and meditation was no longer attract- 
ive; man's pilgrimage had become earthward, not 
heavenward. The claustral life is only possible 
when there is a certain reasonable amount of 
safety. No one can meditate profitably amid 
flying rumours of a fierce enemy at a few miles' 
distance burning and murdering and pillaging. 
In a time of general danger and continual fighting 
the young and able monk must take up his pike, 
tuck up his frock, and fare forth to take his share 
in the defence as much as any ploughboy. To 
retreat within the walls of a convent amid the 
clash of arms, while the rest of the people are 
fighting in the field, seems to the monk's compeers 
— doubtless it actually is — an act of treason and 
cowardice. Therefore, when the Religious Orders 
were dispersed and their houses burned, we may 
readily believe that many monks exchanged the 



124 



THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 



frock for the leathern jerkin, and the Book of 
Hours for the pike. And we may still more read- 
ily understand that when a new monastery was 
built on the ruins of the old, the fighting men 
held aloof from it, and refused to enter it. Dun- 
stan, when he rebuilt Westminster, a little later, 
had the same difficulty. 




North Porch and Church. 



SAXON CHURCH, SEVENTH OR EIGHTH CENTURY, 
BRABFORD-ON-AVON. 



As regards the laws which concern religion, 
I will speak of them soon, and as regards the 
scholars whom he invited to his Court, I will also 
speak later on. 

Returning to Alfred's personal piety, he re- 



ALFRED IN RELIGION. 



25 



solved, whenever he could — that is, whenever he 
was not on a campaign — to give to the service of 
God half the day. It is not quite clear what he 
meant by the service of God. To modern ideas, 




View of Interior, showing very remarkable Chancel Arch 
and Entrance. 

SAXON CHURCH, SEVENTH OR. EIGHTH CENTURY, 
BRADFORD-ON-AVON. 



the daily business of king, judge, and commander- 
in-chief may be, and should be, a far nobler and 
higher form of service than a form of prayer in a 
church, while one can hardly believe that the king 
could possibly devote twelve hours out of the 



126 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

twenty-four to prayer and meditation. Suppose 
the half day means the half of the time left after 
deducting the hours of sleep, of food and refresh- 
ment, and of the daily routine. This method of 
calculation would give three or four hours a day 
at the outside to the prayers which were intended 
for the benefit of his own soul. 

It is, however, to some such division that 
Asser ascribes the invention of Alfred's method 
of measuring time when the sun was not apparent. 
He made six wax candles, of equal length, each 
of which was divided by lines into twelve equal 
parts. These candles he kept lighted day and 
night before the precious relics which he carried 
with him everywhere. 

" Sometimes, when they would not continue burning 
a whole day and night, till the same hour that they were 
lighted the preceding evening, from the violence of the 
wind, which blew day and night without intermission 
through the doors and windows of the churches, the fis- 
sures of the divisions, the plankings, or the wall, or the 
thin canvas of the tents, they then unavoidably burned 
out and finished the course before the appointed time ; 
the king, therefore, considered by what means he might 
shut out the wind, and so by a useful and cunning inven- 
tion, he ordered a lantern to be beautifully constructed of 
wood and white ox-horn, which, when skilfully planed till 
it is thin, is no less transparent than a vessel of glass. This 
lantern, therefore, was wonderfully made of wood and horn, 
as we before said, and by night a candle was put into it, 
which shone as brightly without as within, and was not 
extinguished by the wind ; for the opening of the lantern 
was also closed up, according to the king's command, by 
a door of horn. 

" By this contrivance, then, six candles, lighted in 
succession, lasted four and twenty hours, neither more 
nor less, and, when those were extinguished, others were 
lighted," 



ALFRED AS LAW-GIVER. 127 

The wind whistling through the cracks of the 
wooden walls makes one fear that even the Royal 
Palace was not absolutely a place of comfort. 
But far down into the later ages the draughts 
were the cause of continual toothache and cold, 
so that the men wore their caps with hanging 
sides in the house as well as out of it. 

He gave half his time — in whatever way he 
understood it — to the service of God : he also 
gave half his income. We must understand by 
this half of what was left after the expenses of 
the government. Alfred divided the whole into 
two parts. The first part was divided into three, 
of which one division went to defray the expenses 
of the court — even the court of a Wessex king 
was maintained with much ceremony, hospitality, 
and expense; the second division went to his 
craftsmen, of whom he maintained a great many ; 
the third to encourage the visits of foreigners. 
The other half was destined to the service of 
God, namely, one fourth part for the poor, one 
fourth for the two monasteries of Athelney and 
Shaftesbury, one fourth for his schools, and one 
fourth for other monasteries. Such was the prac- 
tical side of the religion of King Alfred. 



CHAPTER V. 

ALFRED AS LAW-GIVER. 

" We were all despoiled," said Alfred in his 
book, "by the heathen folk." It was a time 
when words were used with strict reference to 



128 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

their meaning and without exaggeration, save by 
ecclesiastics. "We were all despoiled." The 
whole land was " despoiled " of everything. The 
old things were swept away — the venerable cus- 
toms, the laws, the instructions of the people, 
with their churches, their religion, their towns 
and their settlements. It would seem as if there 
has never been a wreck so complete as that of 
Saxon England after the irruption of the Danes. 
Among other things, the laws were swept away 
and quickly forgotten. Imagine, if you can, the 
sudden removal from the streets of the police- 
man and of the authority which stands behind 
him, the closing of all the courts, criminal and 
civil, the burning of all the law books, silence as 
regards any laws, even the Ten Commandments. 
How long would the memory of the old laws re- 
main with us ? At present we are hedged round 
on every side, and we do not feel the restrictions. 
" This and this ye shall not do." We grow up in 
the midst of prohibitions; we are unconscious of 
them. How long should we be unconscious of 
them if they were removed ? How long should 
we recognize the obligation neither to steal nor 
to murder when we might steal and murder as 
much as we pleased, subject to the condition that 
the possessor would defend his property and his 
life by arms ? This was exactly the situation in 
Wessex. The policeman was gone, the judge 
was gone, the prison and the executioner was 
gone; nothing was left. Alfred had to under- 
take the task of restoring laws as well as religion 
to his country. The people had to be lifted up 
again to the old standard, spiritual, moral, and 
intellectual — a gigantic task, even though the 
country was small, and the population was num- 



ALFRED AS LAW-GIVER. 



129 



bered by thousands instead of millions. Civil 
government was paralyzed ; the king's treasury 
was empty ; the towns and settlements were in 
ruins. 

Alfred began the restoration, so far as the laws 
were concerned, by issuing what we should now 
call a new and revised edition of the old laws. 
Observe that an enthusiast, a crank, a king who 
desired to impress his own views upon the people, 
one who believed that a new constitution could 
be invented and imposed upon the ignorant mass, 
would have started afresh with everything new; 
Alfred would have drawn up a body of laws based 
upon Roman law, as that known to the scholars, 
his friends. I do not believe that he was ever 
tempted in this direction at all. On the other 
hand, he seems to have understood the great fact, 
the cardinal fact, that if laws are to possess an 
abiding influence, if they are to form and direct 
the mind, to govern the conduct, to be the laws 
of the people for the people, then they must be 
the growth of centuries and generations; they 
must embody and represent the national charac- 
teristics. Now, successful institutions — those 
which the people adopt — possess a double dis- 
tinction ; they lead and they represent. They 
lead the minds of the young, and they represent 
the minds of the old ; they preserve the national 
character, and they are the outcome of the na- 
tional character. Now, the laws and customs of 
all the peoples in Saxon England — Saxons, Jutes, 
and Angles — were similar because they had the 
same origin ; they were also different because 
they had developed without reference to each 
other. They had grown with the people, and 
were the outcome of the national character. 
9 



i3° 



THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 



Alfred took over as the foundation of his work 
for Wessex the code compiled for the West Sax- 
ons by his ancestor, King Ine; for Mercia, that 
compiled by Offa, King of Mercia; for the Jutes, 
that compiled by Ethelbert, King of Kent. In 
his work, two main principles guided the law-giver : 
first, that justice should be provided for every 
one, high and low, rich and poor; next, that the 
Christian religion should be recognized as con- 
taining the Law of God, which must be the basis 
of all laws. Both these principles were especially 
necessary to be observed at this time. The de- 
vastation of the long wars had caused justice to 
be neglected ; and the destruction of the churches, 
and the murder or flight of the clergy, had caused 
the people to relapse into their old supersti- 
tions. 

King Alfred then boldly began his code by 
reciting the Laws of God. His opening words 
were : " Thus saith the Lord, I am the Lord thy 
God." That is his keynote. The laws of a peo- 
ple must conform with the Laws of God. If they 
are contrary to the spirit of these Laws they can- 
not be righteous laws. In order that every one 
might himself compare his laws with the Laws of 
God, he prefaced his laws first by the Ten Com- 
mandments; after this he quoted at length cer- 
tain chapters of the Mosaic Law. These chapters 
he followed by the short epistle in the Acts of the 
Apostles concerning what should be expected 
and demanded of Christians. Finally, Alfred adds 
the precept from St. Matthew, " Whatsoever ye 
would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
to them." 

Some writers have assumed that Alfred re- 
quired of his subjects by this preamble that they 



ALFRED AS LAW-GIVER. 



!3I 



should be governed in all the details of life by the 
Mosaic Law. This view I cannot accept. Alfred 
set forth, I think, these laws in order that his own 
might be compared with them where comparison 
was possible, and in order to challenge comparison 
and to give the greater weight to his own laws by 
showing that they were based in spirit and muta- 
tis mutandis, on the Levitical Law and on the Law 
of the Gospel. 

Moreover, in order to connect the whole sys- 
tem of justice with religion, in order to teach the 
people in the most efficacious manner possible 
that the Church desires justice above all things, 
he added to the sentence of the judge the pen- 
ance of the Church. This subjection of the law 
to the Church would seem intolerable to us. At 
that time it was necessary to make a rude, igno- 
rant, and violent people understand that religion 
must be more than a creed: that it must have a 
practical and restraining side ; a man who was 
made to understand that an offence against the 
law was an offence against the Church, which 
would be punished by the latter as well as by the 
secular judge, was made for the first time to feel 
the reality of the Church. 

This firm determination to link the Divine Law 
and the human law; this firm reliance on the Di- 
vine Law as the foundation of all law, is to me the 
most characteristic point in the whole of Alfred's 
work. The view, the intention, the purpose of 
King Alfred are summed up, without intention, 
by the poet whom I have already quoted. The 
following words of Rudyard Kipling might be the 
very words of Alfred ; they breathe his very spirit 
— they might be, I say, the very words spoken by 
Alfred :— 



132 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

" Keep ye the law : be swift in all obedience — 
Clear the land of evil : drive the road and bridge the 
ford: 
Make ye sure to each his own 
That he reap where he hath sown : 
By the Peace among our Peoples let men know we serve 
the Lord ! " 

Alfred's code was not founded on that of 
King Ine, or Ina (688-726). It did not abolish 
the older code, but it revised and improved 
it; as we say now, brought it up to date. We 
must not claim for Alfred the creation of Eng- 
lish law. 

His glory consists mainly in his adaptation of 
the old order to the new ; he took all that was left 
of the shattered past and moulded it anew, with 
additions to suit the new situation, and for the 
most part on the same lines. You will ask, per- 
haps, how much of the honour due to Alfred's 
achievements should be given to his ministers and 
how much to himself ? Assign to his officers all 
the credit possible, all that belongs to the faith- 
ful discharge of duty ; still the initiative, the de- 
sign of the whole work, is absolutely due to Al- 
fred himself. He must not be considered as a 
modern king — the modern king reigns while the 
people rule; he was the king who ruled, his will 
ruled the land, he had his Parliament, his Meeting 
of the Wise, but his will ruled them; he appointed 
his earls or aldermen, his will ruled them; he had 
his bishops, his will ruled them. From the time 
when he began to address himself to the organi- 
zation of a strong nation — that is to say, from the 
time when the Dane was baptized, his will ruled 
supreme. No law existed then to limit the king's 
prerogative. The king was imperator, commander 



ALFRED AS LAW-GIVER. 133 

of the army, and every man in the country was 
his soldier. 

That a new departure was deliberately adopted 
is proved from the opening above cited. These 
words, this opening, this connection of the laws 
of Wessex with the laws of God are the recogni- 
tion of the fact that all good laws, as all good 
things of every kind, are the gift of God, and in- 
spired by Him. Before Alfred's time the laws 
were supported by tradition, they were ances- 
tral, they belonged to the prehistoric times, they 
were invented by the gods and heroes of buried 
time. 

The closing words of Alfred's Dialogue are 
as follows : — 

" I, Alfred the King, gathered these [laws] together, 
and ordered many to be written which our forefathers 
held, such as 1 approved, and many which I approved not 
I rejected, and had other ordinances enacted with the 
counsel of my Witan ; for I dared not venture to set much 
of my own upon the statute-book, for I knew not what 
might be approved by those who should come after us. 
But such ordinances as I found, either in the time of my 
kinsman Ine, orofOffa, King of fhe Mercians, or of Ethel- 
berht, who first received Baptism in England — such as 
seemed to me rightest I have collected here, and the rest 
I have let drop. 

" I, then, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, showed 
these laws to all my Witan, and they then said that they 
all approved of them as proper to be holden." 

In this place it is not necessary to consider at 
length the English laws of Alfred or those which 
followed after his time and until the Norman 
Conquest. The tenacity of affection with which 
the laws and customs of Edward the Confessor 
were regarded by the people, and especially by 



134 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

the people of London, was a proof that they had 
become part and parcel of the national mind. 
These laws were not made like our own. Cases 
brought before the Courts were conducted with 
the strictest adherence to forms. The oath of the 
plaintiff or defendant, backed by that of his friends, 
who swore that this oath was true, constitued the 
trial. There were rules as to the number of per- 
sons required to stand by a man, and the number 
required to balance the oath of a thegn, a ceorl, or 
a theow. There were also the ordeals — that of 
eating bread which would choke the perjured 
man ; the ordeal of cold water; the ordeal of hot 
water; the ordeal of hot iron. The ordeal by 
battle was not practised by the Saxons, and after 
the Norman Conquest the people continually 
agitated for a release from the obligation of fight- 
ing an enemy or a plaintiff. All other ordeals, 
observe, could be evaded. The water did not 
always boil, nor did it always scorch the arm; the 
bread did not always choke; the iron was not 
intolerably hot ; but in the ordeal of battle a 
man had to slay or be slain. The Lord of Truth 
would reveal the guilt or the innocence of the 
accused; the gallows stood beside the field of 
battle ready for the defeated man — a terrible 
ordeal, from which there was no escape for the 
perjurer. 

The penalties for manslaughter and acts of 
violence took the form of fines. There was a 
tariff of fines. Any man's price was laid down 
in accordance with his position ; a thane was 
worth six times as much as a common man, and 
his worth counted for six common oaths before 
the court ; the family were helpers or avengers. 
All transactions in property were conducted 



ALFRED AS LAW-GIVER. 135 

openly and before witnesses, in order to avoid 
any charge of dealing with stolen property. 

He who stole on Sunday, or at Christmas, or 
Easter, or Holy Thursday, or on Rogation Days, 
or during Lent, was to pay twice the penalty 
ordered in such cases. If a man revealed an 
offence, not discovered in confession, it was to 
be half forgiven. In treason against king or 
lord there was to be no mercy, and no fine, "be- 
cause God Almighty adjudged no mercy to those 
who despised Him, nor did Christ, the Son of God, 
adjudge any to him who sold him to death." 

There were frequent holidays — twelve days 
at Yule; the day on which Christ overcame the 
devil ; the commemoration of St. Gregory ; a 
fortnight at Easter; one day at St. Peter's-tide ; 
one day at St. Paul's-tide; in harvest the week 
before St. Mary-mass; one day at the celebration 
of All Hallows; and the four Wednesdays in Em- 
ber Week. Observe how laws, punishments, holi- 
days, — all are brought into connection with the 
Church ; a measure which, one must readily ac- 
knowledge, was the most beneficial to the nation 
that could be possibly discovered and applied. 

That many of the laws were harsh, that many 
of them belonged to a rude and still primitive 
time, that they did not include in their net many 
practices and iniquities which belong to a more 
complex time, that many things are cruel — all 
this belongs to the century and to the actual 
levels of the people. As regards cruelty, punish- 
ment to be deterrent must be swift, must be cer- 
tain, must be intelligible by all ; to hurl a woman 
into the river, to burn a slave — all would under- 
stand so much. On the other hand, leniency, had 
it been possible to one of Alfred's century, would 



136 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

have been taken for weakness or for cowardice. 
It was, above all things, necessary that the power 
of the king, which meant the power of the law, 
should be felt at every turn. Take, for instance, 
the origin and the development of the " King's 
Peace." On this point I venture to quote the 
words of a learned lawyer (Pollock, in Bowker's 
"Alfred," p. 228):— 

" Far more significant for the future development of 
English law are the beginnings of the king's peace. In 
later times this became a synonym for public order main- 
tained by the king's general authority ; nowadays we do 
not easily conceive how the peace which lawful men 
ought to keep can be any other than the queen's or the 
commonwealth's. But the king's justice, as we have 
seen, was at first not ordinary but exceptional, and his 
power was called to aid only when other means had failed. 
To be in the king's peace was to have a special protec- 
tion, a local or personal privilege. Every free man was 
entitled to peace in his own house, the sanctity of the 
homestead being one of the most ancient and general 
principles of Teutonic law. The worth set on a man's 
peace, like that of his life, varied with his rank, and thus 
the king's peace was higher than any other man's. Fight- 
ing in the king's house was a capital offence from an early 
time. Gradually the privileges of the king's house were 
extended to the precincts of his court, to the army, to the 
regular meetings of the shire and hundred, and to the 
great roads. Also the king might grant special personal 
protection to his officers and followers ; and these two 
kinds of privilege spread until they coalesced and covered 
the whole ground. The more serious public offences 
were appropriated to the king's jurisdiction ; the king's 
peace was used as a special sanction for the settlement 
of blood-feuds, and was proclaimed on various solemn 
occasions ; it seems to have been specially prominent — 
may we say as a " frontier regulation " ? — where English 
conquest and settlement were recent. In the generation 
before the Conquest it was, to all appearance, extending 



ALFRED AS LAW-GIVER. itf 

fast. In this kind of development the first stage is a 
really exceptional right ; the second is a right which has 
to be distinctly claimed, but is open to all who will claim 
it in the proper form ; the third is the " common right " 
which the courts will take for granted. The Normans 
found the king's peace nearing, if not touching, the sec- 
ond stage." 

With these introductions we can read Asser's 
words with profit and understanding : — 

" The king showed himself a minute investigator of the 
truth in all his judgements, and this especially for the sake 
of the poor, to whose interest, day and night, among other 
duties of this life, he ever was wonderfully attentive. For 
in the whole kingdom the poor, besides him, had a few or 
no protectors ; for all the powerful and noble of that coun- 
try had turned their thought rather to secular than to 
heavenly things: each was more bent on secular matters, 
to his own profit, than on the public good. 

" He strove also, in his own judgements, for the bene- 
fit of both the noble and the ignoble, who often perversely 
quarrelled at the meetings of his earls and officers, so that 
hardly one of them admitted the justice of what had been 
decided by the earls and prefects ; and in consequence of 
this pertinacious and obstinate dissension, all desired to 
have the judgement of the king, and both sides sought at 
once to gratify their desire. But if any one was conscious 
of injustice on his side in the suit, though by law and 
agreement he was compelled, however reluctant, to go 
before the king, yet with his own good will he never 
would consent to go. For he knew that in the king's 
presence no part of his wrong would be hidden ; and no 
wonder, for the king was a most acute investigator in 
passing sentence, as he was in all other things. He in- 
quired into almost all the judgements which were given 
in his own absence, throughout all his dominion, whether 
they were just or unjust. If he perceived there was in- 
iquity in those judgements, he summoned the judges, 
either through his own agency, or through others of his 
faithful servants, and asked them mildly, why they had 



138 THE STORY OF KLNG ALFRED. 

judged so unjustly, whether through ignorance or malevo- 
lence, i.e., whether for the love or fear of any one, or ha- 
tred of others, or also for the desire of money. At length, 
if the judges acknowledged they had given judgement be- 
cause they knew no better, he discreetly and moderately 
reproved their inexperience and folly in such terms as 
these : ' I wonder truly at your insolence, that, whereas 
by God's favour and mine, you have occupied the rank 
and office of the wise, you have neglected the studies and 
labours of the wise. Either, therefore, at once give up 
the discharge of the temporal duties which you hold, or 
endeavour more zealously to study the lessons of wisdom. 
Such are my commands.' At these words the earls and 
prefects would tremble, and endeavour to turn all their 
thoughts to the study of justice, so that, wonderful to say, 
almost all his earls, prefects, and officers, though un- 
learned from their cradles, were sedulously bent upon 
acquiring learning, choosing rather laboriously to acquire 
the knowledge of a new discipline than to resign their 
functions ; but if any one of them from old age or slow- 
ness of talent was unable to make progress in liberal 
studies, he commanded his son, if he had one, or one of 
his kinsmen, or if there was no other person to be had, 
his own freedman or servant, whom he had some time 
before advanced to the office of reading, to recite Saxon 
books before him night and day, whenever he had any 
leisure, and they lamented with deep sighs, in their inmost 
hearts, that in their youth they had never attended to such 
studies ; and they blessed the young men of our days, who 
happily could be instructed in the liberal arts, whilst they 
execrated their own lot, that they had not learned these 
things in their youth, and now, when they are old, though 
wishing to learn them, they are unable." 

Alfred's work as a law-giver is summed up by 
J. A. Green (" History of the English People," 
p. 92):— 

" In Wessex itself, spent by years of deadly struggle, 
with law, order, the machinery of justice and government 
weakened by the pirate storm, material and moral civili- 



ALFRED AS LAW-GIVER. 1 39 

zation had alike to be revived. His work was of a simple 
and practical order. In politics as in war, or in his after 
dealings with letters, he took what was closest at hand 
and made the best of it. In the reorganization of public 
justice his main work was to enforce submission to the 
justice of hundred-moot and shire-moot alike on noble 
and ceorl, ' who were constantly at obstinate variance 
with one another in the folk-moots, so that hardly any 
one of them would grant that to be true doom that had 
been judged for doom by the ealdorman and reeves.' . . . 
" Of a new legislation the king had no thought. 
'Those things which I met with,' he tells us, 'either of 
the days of Ine, my kinsman, or of Offa, King of the 
Mercians, or of yEthelberht, who first among the English 
race received Baptism, those which seemed to me rightest, 
those I have gathered, and rejected the others.' But un- 
pretending as the work might seem, its importance was 
great. With it began the conception of a national law. 
The notion of separate systems of tribal customs for the 
separate peoples passed away ; and the codes of Wessex, 
Mercia, and Kent blended in the doom-book of a common 
England." 

Or, in the words of Sir Frederick Pollock — 

" If we do not nowadays observe King Alfred's 
dooms, or anything like them, still we owe it to the 
work of Alfred and his children that England was saved 
to become an individual nation, and that our fundamental 
ideas of justice have survived all external changes. Those 
ideas may be summed up very shortly. Justice is essen- 
tially public ; the business of parties is to conduct their 
cases according to the rules of law, the business of the 
court is to hear and determine between them, not to con- 
duct an inquiry ; judicial interpretation of the law is the 
only authentic and binding interpretation, and in particu- 
lar the executive has no such power. These principles 
appear obvious to most of us, but there are many civilized 
countries where they are not admitted. We can trace 
them back to the rudest beginnings of our jurisprudence ; 
they are as vigorous as ever, in all the complexity of mod- 
ern affairs, wherever the English tongue is spoken." 



*40 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

CHAPTER VI. 

ALFRED AS EDUCATOR. 

There can be no doubt whatever that Alfred 
was from childhood imbued with a deep reverence 
for letters. The story about the illuminated book 
sufficiently indicates the fact. It has been already 
suggested that Judith, his step-mother, not Osburli, 
his mother, played the leading part in that history. 
Perhaps; we must remember, however, that even 
in the case of Judith the dates do not hold to- 
gether. Alfred was nine years of age at the 
death' of his father, and the incestuous marriage 
of his brother Ethelbald with Judith, who thus 
became his sister-in-law. When he was eleven, 
Ethelbald died, and Judith went back to France. 
The theory consequently falls to the ground, and 
has no other point in its favour than that Judith's 
father, Charles the Bald, was rich in illuminated 
books and in the company of scholars. Still, we 
may, as I said before, accept the story without 
too much curiosity as to its origin and literal 
truth. It strikes a note. 

We have seen how Alfred, as soon as some 
kind of order and security had been re-estab- 
lished, called divines and scholars to his court. 
We next hear that he created a school, at which 
his own sons and the sons of thanes and nobles 
were educated. As for himself he certainly could 
read, because he learned by heart the daily 
prayers and many of the psalms, and to assist 
himself he read them out of a book in which they 
were written down. But it would appear that he 
read with difficulty. Asser, his biographer, had 



ALFRED AS EDUCATOR. 141 

the duty of reading to him, and of making for 
him a manual of quotations, and things worthy 
of remembrance. Asser (already quoted on this 
point) thus speaks of Alfred's imperfect educa- 
tion — 

" This he confessed, with many lamentations and 
sighs, to have been one of his greatest difficulties and 
impedimets in this life, namely, that when he was young 
and had the capacity for learning, he could not find teach- 
ers ; but when he was more advanced in life he was har- 
assed by so many diseases unknown to all the physi- 
cians of this island, as well as by internal and external 
anxieties of sovereignty, and by continual invasions of the 
pagans, and had his teachers and writers also so much 
disturbed, that there was no time for reading. But yet 
among the impediments of this present life, from infancy 
up to the present time, and, as I believe, even until his 
death, he continued to feel the same insatiable desire of 
knowledge." 

The mind of the king on the subject of edu- 
cation is laid open in his Epistle to the Bishops, 
which forms a preface to the " Cura Pastoralis," 
of which we shall speak in another place. The 
preface itself is as follows : — 

" King Alfred bids greet Bishop Waerferth with his 
words lovingly and with friendship ; and I let it be known 
to thee that it has very often come into my mind what 
wise men there formerly were throughout England, both 
of sacred and secular orders ; and how happy times there 
were then throughout England ; and how the kings who 
had power over the nations in those days obeyed God and 
his ministers, and they preserved peace, morality, and 
order at home, and at the same time enlarged their ter- 
ritory abroad ; and how they prospered both with war 
and with wisdom ; and also the sacred orders, how zeal- 
ous they were both in teaching and learning and in all 
the services they owed to God ; and how foreigners came 



142 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

to this land in search of wisdom and instruction, and how 
we should now have to get them from abroad if we were 
to have them. So general was its decay in England that 
there were very few on this side of the H umber who could 
understand their rituals in English or translate a letter 
from Latin into English ; and I believe there were not 
many beyond the Humber. There were so few of them 
that I cannot remember a single one south of the Thames 
when I came to the Throne. 

" Thanks be to God Almighty that we have any 
teachers among us now ! 

" And therefore I command thee to do as I believe 
thou art willing, to disengage thyself from worldly mat- 
ters as often as thou canst, that thou mayest apply the 
wisdom which God has given thee wherever thou canst. 
Consider what punishments would come upon us on ac- 
count of this world, if we neither loved it (wisdom) our- 
selves nor suffered other men to attain it ; we should love 
the name only of Christian, and very few of the virtues. 
When I considered all this I remembered also how I saw 
before it had been all ravaged and burnt, how the churches 
throughout the whole of England stood filled with 
treasures and books, and there was also a great mul- 
titude of God's servants, but they had very little knowl- 
edge of the books, for they could not understand any- 
thing of them because they were not written in their own 
language. As if they had said — 

" ' Our forefathers who formerly held these places 
loved wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth, and 
bequeathed it to us. In this we can still see their tracks, 
but we cannot follow them, and therefore we have lost 
both the wealth and the wisdom, because we would not 
incline our hearts after their example.' 

" When I remembered all this, I wondered extremely 
that the good and wise men who were formerly all over 
England, and had perfectly learned all the books, did not 
wish to translate them into their own language. But 
again I soon answered myself and said — 

" ' They did not think that men would ever be so care- 
less, and that learning would so decay. 

" ' Through that they abstained from it, and they 



ALFRED AS EDUCATOR. 143 

wished that the wisdom in this land might increase with 
our knowledge of languages.' 

" Then I remembered how the law was first known in 
Hebrew, and again, when the Greeks had learned it, they 
translated the whole of it into their own language and all 
other books beside. And again the Romans, when they 
had learned it, they translated the whole of it through 
learned interpreters into their own language. And also 
all other Christian nations translated a part of them into 
their own language. Therefore it seems better to me, if 
ye think so, for us also to translate some books which are 
most needful for all men to know, into the language 
we can all understand, and for you to do as we very 
easily can if we have tranquillity enough — i.e. that all 
the youth now in England of free men, who are rich 
enough to be able to devote themselves to it, is set to learn 
as long as they are not fit for any other occupation, 
until that they are well able to learn English writing ; 
and let those be afterwards taught more in the Latin 
language who are to continue learning, and be pro- 
moted to a higher rank. 

" When I remember how the knowledge of Latin had 
formerly decayed throughout England, and yet many 
could read English writing, I began, among other various 
and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate into 
English the book which is called in Latin ■ Past oralis,' and 
in English ' Shepherd's book,' sometimes word by word 
and sometimes according to sense, as I had learned it 
from Plegmund my archbishop, and Asser my bishop, 
and Grimbold my mass- priest, and John my mass-priest. 
And when I had learned it as 1 could best understand it, 
and as I could most clearly interpret it, I translated it 
into English, and I will send a copy to every bishopric in 
my kingdom ; and on each there is a clasp worth fifty 
mancus. And I command in God's name that no man 
take the clasp from the book, or the book from the minis- 
ter ; it is uncertain how long there may be such learned 
bishops as now, thanks be to God, there are everywhere ; 
therefore I wish them always to remain in their place un- 
less the bishop wish to take them with him or they be 
lent out anywhere, or any one make a copy from them." 



144 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

The plea for translation is modern in its spirit. 
We want, he says, the translation of those books 
which are most needful for men to learn ; we 
want also all the youth of England — all the sons 
of freemen — to learn how to read. Those who 
are rich enough and of higher rank may after- 
wards learn Latin ; but let us give books in Eng- 
lish for the guidance of everybody. Of all Al- 
fred's work this preface seems to me the most 
human, the wisest, and the most sympathetic. 

Part of his design in the rebuilding of the 
monasteries was the restoration of the monastic 
schools. There was in every convent of the time — 
they were all under Benedictine rule — the school. 
The House was not only the retreat of pious 
men and women, but it was also the only possible 
home of learning and the only place for a school. 

It is long since we have regarded a monastery 
as a seat of learning, or the proper place for a 
school. Go back to Alfred's time and consider 
what a monastery meant in a land still full of 
violence, in which morals had been lost, justice 
trampled down, learning destroyed, no schools 
or teachers left. The monastery stood as an 
example and a reminder of self-restraint, peace, 
and order ; a life of industry and such works as 
the most ignorant must acknowledge to be good ; 
where the poor and the sick were received and 
cared for, the young were taught, and the old 
sheltered. It was the life which the monastery 
rule professed ; the aim rather than any lower 
standards accepted by the monks, which made 
him a monastery in that age like a beacon steadily 
and brightly burning, so that the people had 
always before their eyes a reminder of the self- 
governed life. 



ALFRED AS EDUCATOR. 145 

They had also before their eyes the spectacle 
of the scholar's life; learning, to be sure, was at 
a low ebb, still it was learning — of a kind. 

In the cause of education, indeed, Alfred was 
before his age, and even before our age. He 
desired universal education. At his court he pro- 
vided instructors for his children and the children 
of the nobles. They learned to read and write, 
they studied their own language and its poetry, 
they learned Latin, and they learned what they 
called the " liberal sciences," among them the art 
of music. But he thought also of the poorer 
class. "My desire," he says, "is that all the 
freeborn youths of my people may persevere 
in learning until they can perfectly read the 
English scriptures." Unhappily he was unable 
to carry out this wish. Only in our own days 
has been at last attempted the dream of the 
Saxon king — the extension of education to the 
whole people. 

The ordinary monastic school taught the nov- 
ices and the abbot's wards, and whatever scholars 
came from the outside, the elements of reading 
and writing, with Catechism, or question and an- 
swer on common things, the poetry of the coun- 
try, and some elements of Latin. But there were 
" High Schools," as we might call them, in which 
the studies were carried much further, including 
the scholastic philosophy, grammar, versification, 
and such science as was then attainable. Greek, 
as well as Latin, is said to have been taught in 
these schools, but to what extent I know not ; 
certainly there were MSS. of Aristotle. 

Some of the grammar schools still existing in 
this country have been traced back to times 
before the Norman Conquest. It would be inter- 
10 



146 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

esting if we could connect any of them with the 
foundations of Alfred. 

He would have educated the whole people. 
That is the cardinal fact as regards Alfred's 
position as an educator. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ALFRED AS WRITER. 

Alfred, above all and before all, was a 
reformer; he was a conservative reformer who 
desired to rebuild the past, to restore the past, to 
present the past on new foundations and with a 
view to possible developments in the future. 
Now the reformer, in all ages, is liable to the same 
error or danger. If he is one in authority, king 
or minister, he is generally contented with giving 
an order. History is crammed full of the most 
praiseworthy and excellent orders. Their enforce- 
ment is entrusted to officers, overseers, and the 
police. What happens continually is that the 
executive betrays its trust; either it imposes the 
new orders upon the people oppressively and 
harshly, or it neglects them altogether, or it at- 
tempts against the will of the people to enforce 
them occasionally and fitfully, with the result of 
exasperating them and making the law odious. 
There have been more hindrances to advance- 
ment, caused by the enactment of good laws, than 
by the neglect of bad laws. Above all, this may be 
seen in the continual proclamation of ordinance 
for the better government of London. There 
must be no neglected streets, there must be no 



ALFRED AS WRITER. 147 

throwing of refuse into the streets, there must be 
no fires, and therefore no timbered houses, there 
must be no beggars, vagabonds, or masterless 
men in the City, there must be lights in every 
street after dark, no taverns must be open after 
curfew, no one must walk the streets at night, no 
one must carry arms at night, and so on ; these 
laws were proclaimed over and over again, yet 
they all became so many dead letters. 

In the same way, the reformer who is not in 
authority clamours perpetually for new laws ; he 
also leaves the enforcement of the new laws to 
the executive, with the same result. It never 
occurs to the reformer or the Radical, that even 
if he had his own way, even if he got his laws 
passed, the world would be no further advanced 
unless the new laws represented the mind and the 
will of the people. Nor does the Radical reformer 
even reflect that the wise statesman attempts no 
reform unless he knows that the mind of the 
people is with him. He waits, as Gladstone said, 
until the question is ripe. 

This digression may seem to have little or 
nothing to do with Alfred. On the contrary, it 
has everything to do with him ; for he accom- 
panied all his endeavours in civilizing and ad- 
vancing the people, not by new laws which would 
be strange to them, and would only embarrass 
and fetter and irritate them, but by educational 
steps, and by personal supervision. He did not 
put his trust in new laws ; he did, however, put 
his trust in the old laws newly edited ; he did not 
leave the carrying out of new laws to any officers, 
nor even to his judges; he did not hope for re- 
form by the imposition of new laws and the intro- 
duction of new customs. He worked by means 



148 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

of the old things. He founded monasteries, but 
according to the old Benedictine Rule with which 
the people were acquainted ; he filled them with 
scholars and divines, not with those who might, 
perhaps, if they proved zealous, become scholars 
and divines. In everything that he attempted he 
inducted an educational method which should 
prepare the way for new advance upon old lines. 
Especially is this to be remarked in his writings, 
every one of which was intended for educational 
purposes. Among the many points, for instance, 
in which the ignorance of his people was an ob- 
stacle to their improvement was their ignorance 
of the outer world. To the ordinary man of 
Wessex, thane or ceorl, the bright light of day 
shone only upon his own farm, village, or settle- 
ment ; outside, mist and fog began, growing 
thicker the further he looked, until a wall of im- 
penetrable darkness, pierced here and there by 
gleams of light, barred the prospect. The wall 
of darkness hid the whole of the outside world; 
the gleams of light came from the well-known 
and well-trodden paths which led the pilgrim to 
Rome and even beyond. The fog and mist which 
lay between his village and the wall of black 
night covered the lands of other nations — the 
East Saxon, the Anglican, and the Jute. 

Alfred, in his wisdom, perceived that if his 
country was to join the families of Western 
Europe it must not only belong to the newer 
faith, but it must enter into communication with 
those families ; it must understand what lay be- 
yond the wall ; it must push back the darkness. 
He therefore undertook the task — it would have 
been considered the work of a whole life in any 
other man — of making known to his people all 



ALFRED AS WRITER. 149 

that there was to be known of history and geog- 
raphy. 

Between four and five hundred years before 
this time there lived a certain theologian and 
scholar named Paulus Orosius. By birth he was 
a Spaniard. He became, however, a friend of 
St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, by whom he was 
sent into Palestine, there to attack and to dis- 
prove the Pelagian heresy, one of the many unin- 
telligible interpretations of the Incomprehensible 
which were then flying about Christendom, and 
vexing the mind ecclesiastical and orthodox. 
Among other countries, Syria, always a ground 
fruitful in the straw-splittings of theology, had 
become infected with this heresy. Orosius, 
armed with the weapons of orthodoxy, journeyed 
thither, and, in due course, held conferences and 
disputes with the heretics. Finding that he made 
no impression upon them, he retired, consoling 
himself with a box full of the bones of St. Stephen, 
providentially recovered for him while he was in 
Jerusalem. He returned, therefore, to Africa, 
where in time he died. In the early part of the 
fifth century, when Orosius flourished, the minds 
of people were everywhere disquieted with the 
calamities and the miseries of the time. The 
Roman Empire was falling to pieces; Rome itself 
— the city sacred to Christians for the martyrdom 
of Peter, and to the pagan for the long glories of 
the past — had been taken and sacked by Alaric. 
Not even the overthrow of the Latin kingdom of 
Jerusalem, eight hundred years afterwards, cre- 
ated so profound a feeHng of despair as this tak- 
ing of Rome in 410. " Behold," cried the people, 
" the anger of the old gods ! It is by them, on 
account of their neglect and overthrow, that 



150 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

these miseries have happened to the world. 
Where are the gods of the Christians, that they 
cannot help?" Orosius took upon himself to 
issue a reply to this question and to these doubts. 
He wrote a book in which he proved — it was not 
difficult — that similar calamities had in every age 
fallen upon the human race ; that wars, defeats, 
sieges, massacres, devastations, plague, famine, 
fire, had been the continual history of the world; 
that, if the ancient gods were responsible for 
these calamities at a time when no one believed 
in them, they were also responsible for them at a 
time when everybody believed in them ; these 
things could not, therefore, with justice, be at- 
tributed to the ancient gods. In a word, the 
Apology of this ecclesiastic was a chronicle of 
miseries and troubles. 

The history became at once popular, and was 
copied and translated in every Christian country 
and in every language of Christian folk. It re- 
mained the only accessible and compendious his- 
tory of the world for many centuries. When Al- 
fred considered the ignorance of his people it is 
not wonderful that he turned his attention to 
Orosius and to a book which, more than any 
other of those recommended to him by his advis- 
ers, seemed fit for his purpose. He therefore 
undertook to translate it into the vulgar tongue. 
In the preface we find the following brief account 
of Alfred's work. The words seem to be Al- 
fred's own. 

" King Alfred was the interpreter of this book, and 
turned it from book Latin into English, as it is now done. 
Now he set forth word by word, now sense by sense, as 
clearly and as intelligently as he was able, in the midst of 
the various and worldly cares that oft troubled him both 



ALFRED AS WRITER. 151 

in mind and in body. These cares are very hard for us 
to reckon, that in his days came upon the kingdoms to 
which he had succeeded, and yet when he had studied 
this book and turned it from Latin into English prose, he 
wrought it up once more into verse, as it is now done. 
And now he prayeth, and in God's name beseecheth, 
every man that careth to read this book, to pray for him, 
and not to blame him if he understand it more rightly 
than he (Alfred) could. For every man must, according 
to the measure of his understanding and leisure, speak 
what he speaketh and do what he doeth." 

A comparison of the Latin text with Alfred's 
version shows that it was not undertaken in a 
slavish spirit. One can see Asser reading the 
original and translating it clause by clause, while 
Alfred interrupts with his own notes, changing 
the words and making additions for his own 
observations. To compare the original with the 
version is like obtaining a series of glimpses into 
Alfred's mind, just as in a railway-train one 
snatches glimpses of the scenery as the train 
rushes on. 

The question arises how far the work was 
read by the people for whom it was intended, 
namely, the better class — the gentry and the 
scholars first, and the common people afterwards. 
Assuredly the book was not read by the common 
sort, because they could not read. How far it 
was copied for the thanes and their class we 
have no means of judging. It would seem, how- 
ever, that in the halls of the thanes, as in the 
monasteries, the reading aloud of books in the 
vernacular was part of the occupation of the 
winter evenings. Alfred, we may be quite sure, 
knew perfectly well how to get at his people. 
He would not waste his time in making transla- 
tions if no one was to read them. 



152 



THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 



I need not speak further of the history of 
the world as related by Orosius. It is, how- 
ever, introduced by a chapter on geography as it 
was known in the time of Orosius. This docu- 
ment, valuable to the historical student of geog- 
raphy, is enriched in Alfred's version by the 
introduction of the voyage of Oth-here and of 
Wulfstan, as related to Alfred. These voyages, 
which are chiefly connected with the Baltic, 
Alfred rightly judged to be of interest and in- 
struction to his own people. The account is 
placed in the midst of the chapter on geography, 
where Orosius begins to speak of the Northmen, 
and is introduced with no other comment than 
the words, " Oth-here told his Lord, King Alfred, 
etc." 

The voyage reads exactly like one of those 
in which the early explorers described their dis- 
coveries along the coast of North America. 

" He said that he dwelt in the land to the northward 
along the West Sea; he said, however, that that land is 
very long north from thence, but it is all waste, except in 
a few places, where the Fins here and there dwell, for 
hunting in the winter, and in the summer for fishing in 
that sea. He said that he was desirous to try, once on a 
time, how far that country extended due north, or whether 
any one lived to the north of the waste. He then went 
due north along the country, leaving all the way the waste 
land on the right and the wide sea on the left, for three 
days ; he was as far north as the whale-hunters go at the 
farthest. Then he proceeded in his course due north as 
far as he could sail within another three days ; then the 
land there inclined due east, or the sea into the land, he 
knew not which, but he knew that he there waited for a 
west wind, or a little north, and sailed thence eastward 
along that land as far as he could sail in four days ; then 
he had to wait for a due north wind, because the land 



ALFRED AS WRITER. 153 

there inclined due south, or the sea in on that land, he 
knew not which ; he then sailed thence along the coast 
due south, as far as he could sail in five days. There lay 
a great river, up in that land ; they then turned up in that 
river, because they durst not sail on by that river, on ac- 
count of hostility, because all that country was inhabited 
on the other side of that river. He had not before met 
with any land that was inhabited since he came from his 
own home ; but all the way he had waste land on his 
right except fishermen, fowlers, and hunters, all of whom 
were Fins, and he had constantly a wide sea to the 
left." 

Oth-here's home has been placed on the 
shores of Lerivik Sound, between the island of 
Senjen and the mainland, north of the Lofoden 
Islands. The voyage was along the northern 
coast of Norway, having on his left the Arctic 
Sea. He doubled the North Cape, and reached 
the White Sea. He also described to Alfred 
another voyage which he made south through 
the Cattegat among the Danish islands " JEt 
Hsethum, where the Angles lived before they 
came to England." 

The voyage of Wulfstan is in the Baltic, and 
describes the country known afterwards as East- 
land. He also mentions the port called " JEt 
Hsethum." It means " at the heaths," and is 
identified with the small port now called Hadde- 
by, which is an ancient town of Sleswig (see 
Bowker's "Alfred," p. 167). Sir Clements Mark- 
ham says that this ancient port of Sleswig is 
now a pretty little village, with a very vener- 
able granite church on the banks of the river 
Schley, just opposite the more recent town of 
Sleswig. 

The version of Orosius was accompanied by 
other works. The next that must be noticed is 



154 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

the " Consolation of Philosophy," by Boethius. 
This is one of the few books which have been 
able to appeal to the hearts of its readers for 
many centuries. Anicius Manlius Torquatus 
Severinus Boethius (a.d. 470-524) was a rich and 
learned Roman of good family, skilled in all the 
sciences of his time, a student of mathemathics, a 
maker of mathematical instruments, a counsellor 
of King Theodoric, ambassador, Regulator of the 
Imperial Mint, and, unfortunately for himself, a 
reformer of abuses. The court and the land 
were full of abuses. The imperial officers in 
the provinces committed all kinds of tyrannies. 
Boethius attacked them, and defended the 
people; he created a host of enemies. The 
emperor grew old and melancholy, and inclined 
to listen to accusations against his old servants. 
Boethius was arrested and imprisoned as a 
traitor and a magician. In his prison he wrote 
his great work on the " Consolation of Philos- 
ophy. It is a work of prose and verse alter- 
nating. The time in which he lived was a 
period of universal decay and corruption. The 
old civilization was crumbling to pieces; the 
old religion had no longer any believers; there 
is nothing to show that Boethius had accepted 
Christianity, and nothing to show that he had 
any longer faith in the old gods. Rome and 
the glory of Rome were gone. Alaric, Attila, 
Odoacer, had destroyed the prestige and the 
invincibility of Rome. The Consolation which 
Philosophy brought to Boethius was that of 
resignation and of hope. The influence of this 
remarkable work, for a thousand years at least, 
was extraordinary. Alfred's version of the ninth 
century appears to have been the earliest trans- 



ALFRED AS WRITER. 155 

lation. There was a German translation in the 
eleventh century, and a French in the year 
1300. 

The version of Alfred is like his Orosius, a free 
handling of the original. It is interspersed with 
his own thoughts and opinions; it is the excep- 
tion, according to his latest editor, to find even a 
few lines translated word for word. I have already 
quoted a passage of this work in which the king 
speaks, and not Boethius. 

The Pope, Gregory I., called Gregory the 
Great, was born about 540, and died in 609, after 
a Papacy of no more than thirteen years, in which 
he made a lasting mark upon the history of the 
Latin Church. Among his numerous works are 
two which arrived at a greater influence than any 
of the others. First was the " Cura Pastoralis," a 
treatise on the duty of a bishop. This book Al- 
fred set himself to translate. There was a special 
reason for honouring the name of Gregory, by 
whose exertions the country had been recovered to. 
Christendom. In the book called the "Cura Pas- 
toralis " Gregory — 

" collected together many passages that were scattered in 
various parts of his writings. He endeavoured also to 
point out in what spirit and manner the spiritual shepherd 
should enter upon his office, how he ought to conduct 
himself therein, how he should vary his mode of preach- 
ing, so as to suit the different circumstances of his hear- 
ers, and how he must guard himself from self-exaltation 
at the happy result of his labours. In the following cen- 
turies this book had a decided influence in awakening a 
better spirit- among the clergy, and in causing efforts to 
be made to improve the condition of the Church. The 
reforming synods under Charlemagne made it a standard 
for their proceedings with respect to the amendment of 
ecclesiastical affairs." 



156 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

The " Dialogues," so called because the book 
takes the form of conversations between the au- 
thor and his confidential friend, Peter the Deacon, 
were probably translated by Bishop Werfrith of 
Worcester, at Alfred's instigation. 

I have already quoted Alfred's introduction 
to this work and his letter to the bishops. In a 
second preface Alfred writes a short account of 
the work in verse, which Professor Earle thus 
renders — 

" This epistle Augustine 

over salt sea brought from the south 

to us island-dwellers just as it erst 

indited had been by Christ's doughty soldier 

the Roman pontiff. Much right discourse 

did Gregory of glowing wit give forth apace 

with skilful soul, a hoard of studious thought. 

He of mankind converted the most 

to the Ruler of heaven ; he of Romans the best, 

of men the most learned and widest admired. 

At length into English, Alfred the King 

wended my every word ; and me to his writers 

south and north sent out ; more copies of such 

he bade them bring back, that he to his bishops 

might send, for some of them needed it, 

those who with Latin speech had least acquaintance." 

In the preface to the " Dialogues " Alfred sim- 
ply claims the version as his own. 

Bede, called the Venerable, was born in the 
year 673 at Wearmouth, near the mouth of the 
Tyne. He was placed in a monastery at the age 
of seven, and there continued during the whole of 
his life. It is remarkable that this illustrious 
scholar acquired the whole of his learning from 
the library of his northern monastery, far remote 
from the seats of learning in Italy and southern 



ALFRED AS WRITER. 



157 



France. He taught himself by assiduous labour 
in his cell from the books that were accessible to 
him ; the fact shows that the libraries in the 
Northumbrian monasteries were at least respect- 
able, according to the requirements of the time, 
and that these houses, before their destruction by 
the Danes, might become, and did become, for 
those who were inclined for study, the homes of 
learning and scholarship. Bede's most important 
work was his " Ecclesiastical History," which is 
the history of the Church in England to his own 
time. It is evident that in translating this work 
Alfred's intention was to give his people such a 
knowledge of the past history of the Church as 
would confirm in their minds that clinging to 
things venerable and of antiquity which belongs 
to the Teutonic mind. Here they could learn for 
themselves how Christianity displaced the ancient 
paganism ; by what means it was propagated ; 
the story of the martyrs, confessors, and saints; 
something of what it had done for themselves, 
and something of the condition of the Christian 
world in England before the invasion by the 
Danes. It is something, even for us, to under- 
stand the necessity for making such a work popu- 
lar. The book, moreover, is not simply an ec- 
clesiastical history ; it introduces many temporal 
subjects, and contains much information on the 
settlement and partition of England. Alfred in 
his version omits many parts as not likely to be of 
interest to his people. Thus he omits the account 
of the relation between the Church of York and 
the State, while he includes all that is said of the 
Kingdom of Wessex. Doubt has been thrown upon 
this version as Alfred's work, but it is referred to 
as such only a hundred years after his death. 



158 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

The book called the " Blooms " is remarkable 
from many points of view ; it contains not only 
an adaptation of St. Augustine's "Soliloquies" 
and his Epistle to Paulina in the "Vision of God," 
but many extracts from Augustine's " City of 
God," from Gregory and from Jerome, with pas- 
sages which appear to be comments of the king 
himself. Now there is a passage in Asser, where 
the biographer speaks of a manual compiled at 
the king's desire. 

"On a certain day we were both of us sitting in the 
king's chamber, talking on all kinds of subjects, as usual, 
and it happened that I read to him a quotation out of a 
certain book. He heard it attentively with both ears, and 
addressed me with a thoughtful mind, showing me at the 
same moment a book which he carried in his bosom, 
wherein the daily courses and psalms and prayers which 
he had read in his youth were written, and he commanded 
me to write the same quotation in that book. Hearing 
this, and perceiving his ingenuous benevolence and devout 
desire of studying the words of Divine wisdom, I gave, 
though in secret, boundless thanks to Almighty God, who 
had implanted such a love of wisdom in the king's heart. 
But I could not find any empty space in that book where- 
in to write the quotation, for it was already full of various 
matters ; wherefore, I made a little delay, principally that 
I might stir up the bright intellect of the king to a higher 
acquaintance with the Divine testimonies. Upon his urg- 
ing me to make haste and write it quickly, I said to him, 
' Are you willing that I should write that quotation on 
some leaf apart ? For it is not certain whether we shall, 
not find one or more other such extracts which will please 
you ; and if that should so happen, we shall be glad that we 
have kept them apart.' ' Your plan is good,' said he, and 
I gladly made haste to get ready a sheet, in the beginning 
of which I wrote what he bade me ; and on that same 
day I wrote therein, as I had anticipated, no less than 
three other quotations which pleased him ; and from that 
time we daily talked together, and found out other quo- 



ALFRED AS WRITER. 



r 59 



tations which pleased him, so that the sheet became full, 
and deservedly so ; according as it is written. " The just 
man builds upon a moderate foundation, and by degrees 
passes to greater things." Thus, like a most productive 
bee, he flew here and there, asking questions as he went, 
until he had eagerly and unceasingly collected many vari- 
ous flowers of Divine Scriptures, with which he quickly 
stored the cells of his mind. 

" Now, when the first quotation was copied, he was 
eager at once to read it, and to interpret in Saxon, and 
then to teach others ; even as read of that happy robber, 
who recognized his Lord — aye, the Lord of all men — as 
He was hanging on the blessed Cross, and saluting Him 
with his bodily eyes only, because elsewhere he was all 
pierced with nails, cried, ' Loro 1 , remember me when Thou 
comest into Thy kingdom ! ' for it is only at the end of his 
life that he began to learn the rudiments of the Christian 
faith. But the king, inspired by God, began to study the 
rudiments of Divine Scripture on the sacred solemnity 
of St. Martin (Nov. u), and he continued to learn the 
flowers collected by certain masters, and to reduce them 
into the form of one book, as he was then able, although 
mixed one with another, until it became almost as lar^e 
as a psalter. This book he called his ' Enchiridion,' or 
'Manual,' because he carefully kept it at hand day and 
night, and found, as he told me, no small consolation 
therein." 

Is the book of ''Blooms" this manual? It 
seems quite possible, and even probable. I re- 
peat the suggestion because it is one which may 
profitably be followed tip. If it is the truth, then 
we have not only the king's favourite passages 
from the authors whom he studied — to know this 
is to know the mind of the man — but also the 
observations and remarks which he makes upon 
them. 

In the preface to this book Alfred describes 
himself as in a wood full of comely trees. 



160 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

" In every tree I saw something which I needed 
at home, therefore I advise every one who is able, and 
has many wains, that he trade to the same wood where I 
cut the stud-shafts, and there fetch more for himself, and 
load his wain with fair rods, that he may wind many 
a neat wall, and set many a comely house, and build 
many a fair town of them ; and thereby may dwell merrily 
and softly so as now I have not yet done. But He 
who taught me, to whom the wood belonged, (?) may He 
make me to dwell more softly in this temporary cot, the 
while I am in this world, and also in the everlasting home 
which He has promised us through St. Austin, St. Gregory, 
and St. Jerome, and through many other holy Fathers ; 
as I believe, also, for the merits of all these, He will make 
the way more plain than it was before, and especially 
enlighten the eyes of my mind, so that I may search out 
the right way to the everlasting glory and the everlasting 
rest which is promised us through those holy Fathers. 
May it be so ! 

" It is no wonder though men sink in timber-working, 
and in the carrying and building ; but every man wishes, 
after he has built a cottage on his lord's lease by his help, 
that he may sometimes rest him therein, and hunt, and 
fowl, and fish, and use in every way under the lease, both 
on water and on land, until that he earn bookland and 
everlasting heritage through his lord's mercy. 

" So do the Wealthy Giver who wields both these 
temporary cottages and the eternal homes ! May He 
who shaped both, and wields both, grant me that I be 
meet for each, both here to be profitable and thither to 
come ! " 

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle certainly owed 
more than mere encouragement to the king. The 
very words of Alfred are, it is claimed, to be 
found in that part which concerns the wars. It 
is historically certain that Plegmund carried on 
the Chronicle, perhaps also he began it. As is 
well known, it is the principal authority — in many 
cases the sole authority — for the events de- 



ALFRED AS WRITER. j^i 

scribed. If we were deprived of the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle there would be great gaps in our his- 
tory quite impossible to be filled up. 

In the course of time many other works were 
attributed to Alfred. Some of these were really 
his. Such is the king's " Book of Martyrs." There 
were also attributed to him a collection of Prov- 
erbs, a version of ^Esop, a treatise on Falconry, 
and many other things. We have, however, quite 
enough of Alfred's genuine remains without add- 
ing doubtful or apocryphal works. They show 
a mind always active, always at work for the ad- 
vancement of his people. His four principal 
works are deliberately designed each to fill its 
own place and to perform its own duty. The 
Bishop of Bristol sums up the four divisions. 

" For general history, and for history and geography 
relating to their own race on the Continent of Europe, he 
chose Orosius ; for mental study, the ' Consolation ' of 
Boethius ; for realization of the true principles of the life 
and work of religion, the ' Pastoral Care ; ' for the Church 
history of the English people, of course the great and 
priceless book of the Venerable Bede." 

Let me on this subject quote the words of Mr. 
Frederick Harrison (Bowker's "Alfred"): — 

"It is in his own writings that we come to love 
Alfred best. No ruler of men has left us so pellucid a 
revelation of his own soul. As in ' Meditations ' of Aure- 
lius and the Psalms of David, there is given to men the 
outpourings of his aspirations and his sorrows. Neither 
Richelieu, Cromwell, nor William the Silent ever recorded 
more frankly their problems and their aims. In the 
authentic writings of Alfred we are in the presence of one 
who is a teacher as much as a king, who recalls to us 
Augustine and A Kempis, or Bunyan and Jeremy Taylor. 
His Boethius served him as texts whereon he preached to 
ii 



1 62 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

his people profound sermons on the moral and spiritual 
life. Read his homily on Riches — 'that it is better to 
give than to receive ; ' on the true Ruler — ' that power is 
never good, unless he be good that has it ; ' on the uses 
of Adversity — ' no wise man should desire a soft life.' Few 
men ever had so hard a life — with his mysterious and 
cruel malady, ' his thorn in the flesh,' until his early death ; 
with his distracted and ruined kingdom, his ferocious 
enemies, his never-ending cares. And amidst it all we 
have the king in his silent study pouring out poetic 
thought upon married love or friendship ; on true happi- 
ness or the inner life ; composing pastoral poetry or cast- 
ing into English old idylls from Greek epic or myth ; 
ending with some magnificent Te Deum of his own 
composition. . . . 

"Alfred did more than contribute translations to the 
literature of his country ; he laid the very foundations of 
our literature, the most noble literature that the world has 
ever seen. He collected and preserved the poetry based 
on the traditions and legends brought from the German 
forests. He himself delighted to hear and to repeat these 
legends and traditions : the deeds of the mighty warriors 
who fought with monsters, dragons, wild boars, and huge 
serpents. He made his children learn their songs ; he 
had them sung in his court. The tradition goes that he 
could himself sing them to the music of his own harp. 
This wild and spontaneous poetry which Alfred preserved 
is the beginning of our own noble choir of poets. In 
other words, the foundation of that stately Palace of Lit- 
erature, built up by our poets and writers for the admira- 
tion and instruction and consolation of mankind, was laid 
by Alfred. Well, but he did more than collect the poetry, 
he began the prose. Before Alfred there was no Anglo- 
Saxon prose. 



SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 163 

CHAPTER VIII. 

SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 

We have considered Alfred as a warrior, and 
captain, Alfred as the restorer of religion, Alfred 
as the law-giver, Alfred as the encourager of edu- 
cation, Alfred as writer. A few points remain to 
be considered. 

Returning once more to Asser. He says — 

" In the mean time the king, during the frequent wars 
and other trammels of this present life, the invasions of 
the pagans, and his own daily infirmities of body, con- 
tinued to carry on the government, and to exercise hunt- 
ing in all its branches ; to teach his workers in gold and 
artificers of all kinds, his falconers, his hawkers, and dog- 
keepers ; to build houses, majestic and good, beyond all 
the precedents of his ancestors, by his new mechanical 
inventions ; to recite the Saxon books, and especially to 
learn by heart the Saxon poems, and to make others 
learn them ; and he alone never desisted from studying, 
most diligently, to the best of his ability." 

It would seem as if hunting was introduced 
here in a place of needless prominence. Let it be 
remembered, however, that hunting was more 
than a sport. Men did not go out with horse 
and hound in order to ride after a fox ; they went 
out to fight big game — wild boar, wolves, wild 
cattle ; they went out to provide food. Hunting 
was necessary. The fisher folk went after the 
fish in the sea and in the rivers. The fowler 
trapped the myriad wild birds of the fen and 
marsh. The nobler game, the wild deer, was 
hunted by king and nobles ; while the ladies of 
the court went out with falcon on wrist to bring 



164 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

down heron and wild swan, small birds and great 
birds of the woods. Hunting, the trade of the 
savage, became the sport of kings. It was regu- 
lated by a complicated system of rules and cus- 
toms. Not to know this unwritten code was to 
be uneducated and ill-bred; while the servants 
themselves were instructed in the whole art of 
the chase for the conservation of their herds and 
the maintenance of the royal sport. Thus we 
find Alfred, as stated above, instructing his fal- 
coners, hawkers, and dog-keepers. 

He also encouraged the work of the crafts- 
men, goldsmiths, and jewellers. In these arts 
the Saxons greatly excelled. A single instance 
of the work of his goldsmiths, King Alfred's 
jewel, is a monument of the level attained under 
the trying conditions of war and defeat, in which 
the artist had to work. This jewel was found 
near Athelney in the year 1693. It is now pre- 
served at Oxford, beside another jewel of the 
same period. Pauli describes the jewel as — 

" a polished crystal of an oval form, rather more than two 
inches in length and naif an inch thick, inlaid with a mo- 
saic enamel of green and yellow. This enamel represents 
the outline of a human figure, which appears to be in a 
sitting posture, holding in each hand a sort of lily-branch 
in blossom. This figure may be meant to represent St. 
Cuthbert, or even Christ, or it may be simply a king in 
state attire. The reverse side of the jewel is covered by 
a plate of fine gold, on which, somewhat tastefully and 
fancifully, a flower is engraved. The oval sides are bor- 
dered by beaten gold, admirably and durably manufac- 
tured, bearing around them the words : 

1 AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN ' 

(' Alfred ordered me to be made '). 



SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 165 

" The letters of this inscription are all capitals, and in 
their somewhat stiff form agree entirely with the initial 
letters in the principal parts of the authentic manuscripts 
of Alfred's time. Still more than the letters, the form of 
the two middle words, by their spelling, bears witness to 




KINO ALFRED S JEWEL. 

the age claimed by the motto. At the extreme end, where 
the crystal and its border join the gold, it is finished by a 
beautifully worked dolphin's head in gold, whose empty 
eye-sockets must have once contained precious stones, 
and from whose open jaws a small golden pin protrudes. 
This probably served as a fastening to a cane, or some 
ornamental staff, on the point of which the jewel was 
placed. It may, indeed, have been a part of the king's 
sceptre." 

As a specimen of women's work in gold of 
nearly the same time may be taken the stole, 



1 66 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

woven with gold wire beaten flat, like narrow 
tape, preserved in the Chapter Library of Dur- 
ham. It was worked by Saxon ladies, and given 
to St. Cuthbert's tomb by Athelstan in 934. 

In architecture Asser speaks of royal halls 
and vills of stone; but nothing remains which 
can be assigned to Alfred himself. He repaired 
the walls of London, but where are they now ? 
He built St. Paul's, but that building was destroyed 
by fire. It was probably Alfred who changed the 
position of the London gates, and ran new streets 
across the old and ruined sites ; but where are 
the gates, and who would recognize the Cheap- 
side of to-day with the Chepe of a thousand years 
ago ? Of Saxon churches there are a few scat- 
tered about the country; but, again, not one 
which we can ascribe to Alfred. There is the 
ancient Church of St. Lawrence, Bradford-on- 
Avon, which may be as early as the ninth century. 
There is Deerhurst, near Tewkesbury, built in 
io 53> two hundred years after Alfred. At Wing 
near Aylesbury, at Colchester, at Cambridge, at 
Limpsfield, at Earl's Barton, at Oxford, there are 
parts still standing of the old Saxon churches. I 
should say that the little church at Bradford-on- 
Avon may be taken as a good specimen of the 
Saxon parish church. It is cruciform, it is lighted 
by small and narrow windows, which were not 
glazed, there was no pavement, the arch connect- 
ing nave and chancel is a narrow doorway, the 
ornamentation is rude. It is a stone church, which 
proves that it was built by some wealthy person, 
perhaps by Aldhelm himself, when he founded the 
nunnery at Bradford — this would bring us to the 
beginning of the seventh century. It is a very 
small church ; but then the village or parish for 



SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 167 

which it was built was also very small. Probably 
the church was quite large enough for the congre- 
gation. 

Another typical Saxon church may be that of 
Greenstead, also a very small church, originally. 
The nave is built of trunks of trees cut straight 
through the middle, the round part left outside. 
In the restoration of the parish churches we may 
be quite sure that the first object was the pos- 
session of a church, its decoration and material 
being quite a secondary consideration. Alfred, 
therefore, was a great architect and builder. It 
is the temptation of kings to build. Which 
would one prefer to be, the king of whom nothing 
but the name remains attached to his huge pyra- 
mid, or the king whose pyramid has vanished, 
while his name, and his history, and his achieve- 
ments are deathless ? Alfred's pyramid has van- 
ished. 

Alfred was a musician. Every educated youth 
was a musician, and could play, while some could 
sing. According to tradition Alfred could sing 
as well as play. 

We may picture for ourselves the royal hall 
in which the Saxon poems were sung or recited. 
It is a long hall — say 200 feet by 40 feet — with a 
high roof and curved gables. There is a door at 
each end, with a porch enlarged at one end so 
as to form pantry, buttery, kitchen, and larder. 
Below these offices is the cellar. Wright repro- 
duces a picture representing the cellar, with serv- 
ants who draw the ale or mead, and carry it up 
the ladder which serves for a stair. The hall con- 
sists of a spacious nave, in which a double row of 
pillars supports the high roof, having a narrow aisle 
on either side. Down the middle of the floor runs 



168 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

the stone hearth, on which blaze the fires of wood. 
At the upper end is a cross-bench, where the 
king or the chief sits. With him are his wife, 
who fills the cups, and the thanes. On each side 
of the long hearth runs a line of tables with 
benches and stools, where sit the chief's " hearth- 
sharers." At the lower end is a table with cups. 
Between the rows of pillars and the walls are 
sleeping-places for the ladies and the women. 
Tapestry and hangings separated this space from 
the hall ; and in the hall the gleeman sat, harp 
in hand, singing or chanting, while his fingers ran 
up and down the strings of the harp, the allitera- 
tive poems of the time. When one hears the im- 
promptu singing of the Welsh while the harp 
plays one of the familiar Welsh tunes, the singer 
always in harmony with the air, it is the ancient 
gleeman who sings to the accompaniment of the 
ancient harp. 

Or the gleeman played, as the man with the 
drum and the Pandean pipes now plays, while the 
juggler tossed the balls and caught the knives, — 
tricks as old as balls and knives themselves; or 
the tumblers and posturers threw themselves into 
strange contortions, and the dancing-girl danced 
upon her head. The dancing-girl of the East 
was not introduced until five hundred years later, 
when she came over from Syria with Richard, 
Earl of Cornwall. Perhaps there were still main- 
tained the old games of strength, while the glee- 
man played. The Danish game of bone-throw- 
ing was never a pastime of the English. Or they 
asked riddles in verse, the answers of which every- 
body knew; yet they were asked over and over 
again, for the folk were still a simple folk, pleased 
with a repetition of the old jingle, and with their 



SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 169 

own cleverness in guessing again what everybody 
knew already. 

They sang the wild songs of Beowulf, " Csed- 
mon's Poems of the Creation," the ''Traveller's 
Song," the " Lament of Deor," Amywulf's " Elme," 
and his "Vision of the Holy Rood," and all the 
poetry of the early Saxon period ; they told fables ; 
they delivered moral axioms ; they taught all kinds 
of knowledge by question and answer, not cate- 
chizing the people, but singing to them; they re- 
lated legends and lives of the saints; they quoted 
pithy sayings and proverbs, as, for example, the 
following : — 

" Virtue is a great spell against demons. The reins 
of the tongue are fastened in the heart. Eyes are of no 
use to the blindly minded. Happy he who learns by the 
whipping got by another. Keep your new friend and 
your wine until they are old. Enslave your mind to no 
malignant luxuries. The much talker strips his mind of 
its real merits. If you would be great, be moderate." 

There were materials in plenty for the winter 
evenings, when the cups went round freely and 
more than freely among those seasoned heads, 
and round the fires lay the people listening to the 
gleeman, carried out of themselves by the music 
and the song. 

The coins of a period may also be used in esti- 
mating the art of the time. There is no difficulty 
in examining them, for a great many coins of Al- 
fred are extant, and may be studied in the muse- 
ums. It is to be observed that the coinage, then 
and long after, was entrusted to functionaries 
called moneyers, who had license and power to 
strike coins at certain towns only. This practice 
was continued by the Norman kings. The story 



170 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

of the terrible punishment inflicted on his money- 
ers by Henry I. for issuing debased coins is an 
illustration of the practice and the dangers; for 
who could prevent the production of debased 
money when the " moneyer " made his profit out 
of the issue, and there was no place of assay ? It 
is not stated anywhere to my knowledge how the 
mints were supplied with silver; when the exist- 
ing coinage was all called in it was so much 
worn and clipped as to be worth little, while it 
was too frequently made of base metal, and 
worth nothing. 

There was more than one reason for setting 
up the mints in various places. The mint was, to 




PENNY OF ALFRED THE GREAT. 

begin with, a sign of authority; where Alfred's 
money was made, there Alfred's authority pre- 
vailed. Again, the difficulties of internal com- 
munication were so great — in the winter it was 
well-nigh impossible to convey any kind of goods, 
merchandise, wares, or stores, from one place to 
another — that it was necessary to set up a mint 
in every important centre. When the coinage 
had become scarce, debased, or clipped in one 
district — these things were always happening 
with the coinage — it was desirable to replace it 
by another impression as speedily as possible. 



SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 17 1 

If there had been but one central mint, how 
could the coinage be supplied within a reason- 
able time, say, from London to the North ? It 
was, therefore, convenient to have mints in vari- 
ous parts of the country. If we examined into 
the matter more curiously I think it would be 
found that there was a direct connection between 
the situation of the mint and the population and 
trade of the place. This point I must, however, 
leave for others to investigate. It is sufficient 
here to state that King Alfred set up the Royal 
Mint at London, Bath, Canterbury, Winchester, 
Exeter, Gloucester, Oxford, and Lincoln — perhaps 
also in places further north. Alfred's coins do not 
show any marked advance on those of his prede- 
cessors, but if we remember the conditions under 
which the moneyer had to work, the wreck of art 
and the dispersion of craftsmen, the result cer- 
tainly illustrates the aptitude of the Saxon for 
this kind of art. It was, we know, the occupa- 
tion of Dunstan, when an anchorite in his monas- 
tery, to work in gold and silver. 

It was, however, in the illustration and illumi- 
nation of books that the artistic skill of the peo- 
ple was chiefly shown. No country in Western 
Europe could produce books more beautiful, with 
finer writing or with finer pictures, than the copy- 
ists and illustrators of Alfred's reign. In the 
words of Mr. Loftie (Bowker's "Alfred," p. 256), 
" the mechanical part of the work alone shows the 
high standard of the art. In the time of Alfred 
artists could command the help of artificers who 
knew how to make vellum fit for the most deli- 
cate painting and writing ; colours were pro- 
duced worthy of the vellum for which they were 
prepared; gold-beating and gilding with the leaf 



172 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

had been carried to perfection never since sur- 
passed." 

About fifty years after Alfred's death a book 
called the " Benedictional " was written for Ethel- 
wold, Bishop of Winchester, which has been con- 
sidered to mark the highest level of Anglo-Saxon 
art. The antiquary Ottley thus speaks of it : — 

" You desire from me a few words on the illumina- 
tions in St. yEthel wold's ' Benedictionary,' with my opin- 
ion of their merits as works of art. I feel honoured by 
the request, and comply with it the more willingly, as I 
can honestly say that I think them in the highest degree 
creditable to the taste and intelligence of this nation at a 
period when in most parts of Europe the fine arts are 
commonly believed to have been at a very low ebb." 

One more aspect of Alfred's foresight. He 
endeavoured to remove the separation of his 
island from the rest of the world — a separation 
which has been of the greatest possible advan- 
tage on the whole, which has saved our country 
from those wars, invasions, and occupations which 
from time to time have devastated France, Ger- 
many, Spain, and Italy. Yet the separation had 
its dangers, and these very great and real. These 
dangers are obvious; they are summed up in a 
word — insularity. When our Continental critics 
and our American cousins have nothing else to 
reproach us with, they call us insulars. We may 
understand by this a conservatism born of igno- 
rance : prejudices which mean a blind pride in 
our own institutions; the contempt of foreign- 
ers; the slow reception of new ideas; the disin- 
clination to change our habits. There was a time 
— not long since — when this reproach could be 
very justly brought against us. We have been 
ignorant, blind, and prejudiced; until recently 



SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 173 

we mobbed the peaceful foreigner in the street, 
and affected to despise the foreigner in war. We 
were the only land of freedom — with the House 
of Commons filled with younger sons and place- 
men ; we were the only land of justice — with 
packed juries and judges who were creatures of 
the Court; we were the land of religious liberty 
— with exclusion from every office and every pro- 
fession of Catholic, Nonconformist, and Jew; we 
supposed ourselves the envy of the whole world, 
while we hanged women and children for trifles, 
flogged soldiers and sailors to death, and impris- 
oned thousands because they could not pay a 
debt of a few shillings. What insularity meant 
may be learned from the annals of the eighteenth 
century. Perhaps Alfred did not foresee all these 
things, but he did foresee the evils of separation 
from the families of Christendom ; and he did 
undoubtedly foresee the evils of ignorance and 
stupid prejudice. The barrier which they would 
erect, the great wall they would put up round his 
kingdom, the wall beyond which all was surmise, 
legend, report, terror, and even contempt; the 
barrier which would stop the merchant and the 
traveller, which would make foreign trade and 
enlightenment and enterprise impossible, he did 
all he could to break down and to destroy. 

With this view he encouraged divines, scholars, 
and men of learning to come over ; he gave them 
entertainment at his court; he conferred posts of 
dignity and honour upon them ; he raised them 
to be bishops and abbots; he consulted with 
them, and made them his personal friends; he 
introduced craftsmen of all kinds to revive the 
arts which had been lost in the long wars, par- 
ticularly those arts in which his people had for- 



174 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

merly excelled, and would again excel — the gold 
and silver work, the fine embroidery, the illu- 
mination of books, the writing of books, an art 
in itself; so clear, so fine, so beautiful was the 
English writing. He created commercial rela- 
tions with foreign countries; he revived and re- 
stored the trade of his neglected and desolated 
ports — these were the ports of London, Dover, 
and Southampton. As regards London, the City 
had been once before left desolate; on that occa- 
sion the foreign merchants found it again when 
the wave of war had passed over, and the place, 
although empty, was once more safe. Alfred 
did not wait for the merchants to find out that 
order was restored ; as soon as the walls were 
repaired, with the bridge and the quays, he sent 
messages inviting the return of trade. Thus, in 
a double sense, he rebuilt and restored London, 
of which he must be regarded as the Founder, 
since the earlier City had wholly disappeared. It 
was, one supposes, for the purpose of creating 
commercial friendships that he gave his daughter 
in marriage, not to one of his own thanes, but to 
a foreign prince, Baldwin, the son of Judith, once 
his stepmother. He raised to the order of gentle- 
hood every merchant who had made three voy- 
ages to the Mediterranean in person and at his 
own expense; he sent embassies abroad, to Rome, 
to France, to the East ; he received letters and 
presents from the Patriarch of Jerusalem ; he 
actually sent an embassy to India itself, to lay 
presents upon the tombs of St. Thomas and St. 
Bartholomew. This, to my mind, is a story so 
marvellous that it seems almost incredible. Yet 
its very difficulties — the distance, the journey 
thither, beyond the reach of Christian monas- 



SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 175 

teries and the power of Christian Rome, help to 
make it more credible. If Alfred had known how 
far it was to India, how dangerous and long and 
difficult was the journey, how fanatical were some 
of the people on the way, he would have hesitated 
before sending his ambassadors thither. On the 
other hand, he had heard of Charlemagne's em- 
bassies to the Caliph of Bagdad, and he desired, 
perhaps, to show that what the great Emperor 
had done he, the king of a kingdom small and 
obscure, but with ambitions, could also emulate. 
Above all, he awakened in the somewhat sluggish 
minds of his people the imagination and the spirit 
of curiosity and adventure which were necessary 
for the part which England would be called upon 
to play. And this, we may reasonably suppose, 
was what he most desired to effect. 

We have come to the end of Alfred's life and 
reign. You have seen him fighting as a boy and 
man almost continuously for thirty years and 
more, nearly the whole of his active life; you 
have seen his kingdom overrun, his people mur- 
dered, his land devastated, his churches and 
schools swept away ; you have seen religion, 
liberty, learning, the arts all destroyed; every 
thing, as he says, " despoiled by the heathen." 
Only one thing remained to the unfortunate 
country, the tenacity, the courage, the faith of 
the king. You have seen how he triumphed 
over his enemies ; how he laid the foundations 
in everything of the England that was to grow 
out of his little kingdom of Wessex. Do not call 
him the creator or the founder of anything; he 
renewed the foundations ; he made the growth and 
development of England possible; he gave us 
our fleet, our army, our institutions, our religion, 



176 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

our arts, and our trade. Not that he invented, 
created, or founded these things; his brother had 
a fleet, there were English armies before his time, 
there was a code of laws before his own, there 
was a foreign trade, there were arts before Alfred 
lived. But everything had been destroyed ; and 
Alfred, in restoring and rebuilding, renewed the 
foundations, and made things stable which before 
were unstable; placed on the solid rock of relig- 
ion what had previously rested on the shifting 
sands of tradition. 

Historians have exhausted themselves in 
praise of the character, the personal force, of 
Alfred. His secret was the entire absence of 
personal ambition or aggrandisement; he worked 
for his people, and in working for them and for 
them alone, he established his own name and 
fame for as long as the English name shall last. 

Let me give, in his own words, his own con- 
ception of what a king should be — 

" Power is never a good, unless he be good that has 
it ; so it is the good of the man, not of the power. If 
power be goodness, therefore is it that no man by his do- 
minion can come to the virtues, and to merit ; but by his 
virtues and merit he comes to dominion and power. Thus 
no man is better for his power ; but if he be good, it is 
from his virtues that he is good. From his virtues he be- 
comes worthy of power, if he be worthy of it. . . . By 
wisdom you may come to power, though you should not 
desire the power. You need not be solicitous about 
power, nor strive after it. If you be wise and good, it 
will follow you though you should not wish. . . . 

" Ah ! Wise One, thou knowest that greed and the 
possession of this earthly power never were pleasing to 
me, nor did I ever greatly desire this earthly kingdom — 
save that I desired tools and materials to do the work 
that it was commanded me to do. This was that I might 



SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 177 

guide and wield wisely the authority committed to me. 
Why, thou knowest, that no man may understand any 
craft or wield any power unless he have tools and mate- 
rials. Every craft has its proper tools. But the tools 
that a king needs to rule are these : to have his land fully 
peopled ; to have priestmen, and soldiermen, and work- 
men. Yea, thou knowest that without these tools no 
king can put forth his capacity to rule. ... It was for 
this I desired materials to govern with, that my ability to 
rule might not be forgotten and hidden away. For every 
faculty and authority is apt to grow obsolete and ignored, 
if it be without wisdom ; and that which is done in un- 
wisdom can never be reckoned as skill. This will I say 
— that I have sought to live worthily the while I lived, 
and after my life to leave to the men that come after Die 
a remembering of me in good works. . . . 

" Ah ! my soul, one evil is stoutly to be shunned. It 
is that which most constantly and grievously deceives all 
those who have a nature of distinction, but who have not 
attained to full command of their powers. This is the 
desire of false glory and of unrighteous power, and of im- 
moderate fame of good deeds above all other people. 
For many men desire power that they may have fame, 
though they be unworthy, for even the most depraved 
desire it also. But he that will investigate this fame 
wisely and earnestly will perceive how little it is, how 
precarious, how frail, how bereft it is of all that is good. 

" Glory of this world ! Why do foolish men with a 
false voice call thee glory ? Thou art not so. More men 
have pomp and glory and worship from the opinion of 
foolish people than they have from their own works. 

" They say a certain king cried : he had a naked 
sword hanging over his head by a small thread, ready 
at a moment to cut short his life. It was so always 
to me. . . ." 

Among all who have written of Alfred, and 
written worthily and eloquently, there is no trib- 
ute so entirely satisfactory in its expression as 
that of Freeman : — 



178 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

" Alfred ... is the most perfect character in history. 
He is a singular instance of a prince who has become a 
hero of romance, who, as a hero of romance, has had 
countless imaginary exploits and imaginary institutions 
attributed to him, but to whose character romance has 
done no more than justice, and who appears in exactly 
the same light in history and in fable. No other man on 
record has ever so thoroughly united all the virtues both 
of the ruler and of the private man. In no other man on 
record were so many virtues disfigured by so little alloy. 
A saint without superstition, a scholar without ostenta- 
tion, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence 
of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never 
stained by cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity, 
lifted up to insolence in the hour of triumph ; there is no 
other name in history to compare with his. St. Lewis 
comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monas- 
tic piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic vir- 
tues. Alfred and Lewis alike stand forth in honourable 
contrast to the abject superstition of some other royal 
saints who were so selfishly engaged in the care of their 
own souls that they refused to either raise up heirs to 
their throne, or to strike a blow on behalf of their people. 
But even in St. Lewis we see a disposition to forsake an 
immediate sphere of duty for the sake of distant and un- 
profitable, however pious and glorious, undertakings. 
The true duties of a king of the French clearly lay in 
France, and not in Egypt or at Tunis. No such charge 
lies at the door of the great king of the West Saxons. 
With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, 
for purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian 
benevolence, Alfred never forgot that his first duty was to 
his own people. He forestalled our own age in exploring 
the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms to the distant 
churches of India ; but he neither forsook his crown, like 
some of his predecessors, nor neglected his duties, like 
some of his successors. The virtue of Alfred, like the 
virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous displays 
of superhuman genius, but in the simple straightforward 
discharge of the duty of the moment. But Washington, 
soldier, statesman, and patriot, like Alfred, has no claim 



SUMMARY OF THE REIGN. 179 

to Alfred's character of scholar and master of scholars. 
William the Silent, like Alfred the deliverer of his people, 
had no call to be also their literary teacher ; and in his 
career, glorious as it is, there is an element of intrigue 
which is quite unlike the noble simplicity of both Alfred 
and Washington. The same union of zeal for religion 
and learning, with the highest gifts of the warrior and the 
statesman, is found on a wider field of action in Charles 
the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire to the pure 
glory of Alfred. Amidst all the splendours of conquest 
and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of personal 
ambition and personal vice, to occasional unjust aggres- 
sions and occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own 
later princes the great Edward alone can bear for a mo- 
ment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, 
when tried by such a standard, even the great Edward 
fails. Even in him we do not see the same wonderful 
union of gifts and virtues which so seldom meet together : 
we cannot acquit Edward of occasional acts of violence, 
of occasional recklessness as to means ; we cannot attrib- 
ute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike disinterest- 
edness which marks the character of Alfred. The times, 
indeed, were different ; Edward had to tread the path of 
righteousness and honour in a time of far more tangled 
policy, and amidst temptations, not harder, indeed, but 
far more subtle. The legislative merits of Edward are 
greater than those of Alfred ; but this is a difference in 
the times rather than in the men. The popular error 
which makes Alfred the personal author of all our insti- 
tutions hardly needs a fresh confutation. Popular legends 
attribute to him the invention of trial by jury and of 
countless other portions cf our law, the germs of which 
may be discerned ages before the time of Alfred, while 
their existing shapes cannot be discerned till ages after 
him. Alfred, like so many of our early kings, collected 
and codified the laws of his predecessors ; but we have 
his own personal witness that he purposely abstained 
from any large amount of strictly new legislation. The 
legislation of Edward, on the other hand, in its boldness 
and originality, forms the most marked of all epochs in 
the history of our law. It is perhaps, after all, in his lit- 



180 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

erary aspect that the distinctive beauty of Alfred's char- 
acter shines forth most clearly. The mere patronage of 
learning was common to him with many princes of his 
age. Both Charles the Great and many of his successors 
had set brilliant examples in this way. What distin- 
guished him was his own personal appearance as an 
author. Now, as a rule, literary kings have not been a 
class deserving of much honour. They have commonly 
stepped out of their natural sphere only to display the 
least honourable characteristics of another calling. But 
it was not so with the Emperor Marcus ; it was not so 
with our Alfred. In Alfred there is no sign of literary 
pedantry, ostentation, or jealousy ; nothing is done for his 
own glory ; he writes, just as he fights and legislates, 
with a single eye to the good of his people. He shows 
no signs of original genius ; he is simply an editor and 
translator, working honestly for the improvement of the 
subjects he loved. This is really a purer fame, and one 
more in harmony with the other features of Alfred's char- 
acter than the highest achievements of the poet, the his- 
torian, or the philosopher. I repeat, then, that Alfred is 
the most perfect character in history. And he was spe- 
cially happy in handing on a large share of his genius and 
his virtue to those who came after him. The West 
Saxon kings, for nearly a century, form one of the most 
brilliant royal lines on record. From the Saint to Edgar 
the Peaceful, the short and wretched reign of Eadwig is 
the only interruption to one continued display of valour 
under the guidance of wisdom. The greatness of dyn- 
asty, obscured under the second Ethelred, flashes forth 
for a moment in the short and glorious career of the sec- 
ond Eadmund. It then becomes more permanently 
eclipsed under the rule of Dane, Norman, and Angevin, 
till it shines forth once more in the first of the new race 
whom we can claim as English at heart, till, if not Alfred 
himself, at least his unconquered son, seems to rise 
again to life in one who at once bore his name and fol- 
lowed in his steps. 

" It may be asked, what manner of man to look at was 
this great king ? His biographer, Asser, who knew him 
well, has not thought fit to tell us. He only says in words 



DEATH OF THE KING. 181 

of flattery that Alfred was more comely and gracious of 
aspect than his brothers. These brothers, four in num- 
ber, were all kings before him, and all died young. Al- 
fred himself was afflicted by a disease which never left 
him. It is therefore presumable that there was some 
congenital weakness in them all. This was not physical 
weakness ; whatever the disease, it did not interfere with 
Alfred's courage or his prowess in battle. This is proved 
by the fact that the Saxon kings actually fought in person 
in the forefront of the battle, and on foot. Alfred, for in- 
stance, fought in a dozen battles at least, and always with 
the valour that belongs to a strong man. I take him to 
have been a man of good stature and of strong build ; a 
man whose appearance was kingly, who impressed his 
followers with the gallant and confident carriage of a 
brave soldier. But as to his face, or the colour of his hair 
or eyes, I can tell nothing. Fair hair he had, I think, and 
blue eyes, or the more common type of brown hair and 
grey eyes. When a king resigns all personal ambitions 
and seeks nothing for himself, it seems natural and fitting 
that, while his works live after him, he himself should 
vanish without leaving so much as a tradition of his face 
or figure." 



CHAPTER IX. 

DEATH OF THE KING. 

I have asked, without the hope of getting a 
reply, what was the nature of the disease from 
which Alfred suffered for thirty years or more. 
Whatever it was, it seems to have killed him at 
last. Alfred died at the age of fifty-three, on Oc- 
tober 28, 901 (to accept the date generally given). 
It is to be regretted that no particulars of his 
death have come down to us. Considering, how- 
ever, the apocryphal nature of most death-bed 



182 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

scenes and the certainty that words would be put 
into the dying man's mouth which would be well 
meant but misleading, it is perhaps as well that 
nothing has been set down about his death. He 
died ; we know no more ; but we may be very cer- 
tain that he died happily, with the full conscious- 
ness of having at least tried to do his duty. The 
most perfect of human figures must needs fall 
short of the Divine perfection ; there were weak- 
nesses of which we know nothing, perhaps things 
which lay upon the king's conscience ; but, to out- 
ward seeming, as far as posterity can judge, the 
man was blameless. 

They buried him in the Cathedral of Winches- 
ter. Round the chancel of that most venerable 
structure are still preserved the coffins of many 
kings of the House of Cerdic. But you may look 
in vain for that of Alfred. The body was re- 
moved two hundred years afterwards, by Henry 
I., and placed in the chapel of the house called 
Hyde Abbey, and there, somewhere among the 
ruins, still lies the dust of the great West Saxon 
king. 

Pauli has gathered together all that is known 
of Alfred's domestic life. His widowed consort, 
Elswyth, died in 905. Her husband Alfred had 
left her by will the manors of Wantage and Ethan- 
dune ; the first because he was born there, the 
other because it was the place where he won the 
freedom of his country. 

Alfred left several sons and daughters. Of 
the latter Ethelfleda, the eldest, married Ethelred, 
and became the " Lady of Mercia." She had a 
daughter, but her line ended with her. 

Ethelgiva entered the religious life, and be- 
came Abbess of Shaftesbury ; Elfrida, the third 



DEATH OF THE KING. 1 83 

daughter, married Baldwin II., Count of Flanders. 
I have already mentioned that through Elfrida our 
royal family is descended from Alfred. Among 
other estates presented to Elfrida by her father 
was that of Lewisham in Kent. 

Alfred's sons were Edward, afterwards king, 
and Ethelwald, of whose children and their de- 
scendants nothing is known. 

Alfred's will provides for all his children and 
his friends. Besides the estates bequeathed to 
the former, he gave his two sons ^500 in money; 
to his consort Elswyth, and each of his three 
daughters, ^100; to his ealdermen, 100 marks 
each; to his serving-men, ^200 to be divided 
among them ; to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
100 marks; to the Bishops of Hereford, Worces- 
ter and Sheborne, 100 marks each ; for masses and 
services for his soul, ^200. As regards the prin- 
ciples upon which he acted in drawing up his will, 
he states clearly: — 

" I will that the persons who hold land follow the com- 
mand in my father's will as far as is possible. And if I 
have detained any money from any man. I will that my 
relations repay it. I will that those to whom I have be- 
queathed mv bocland shall never after their lifetime let 
it go out of my family, but if so be that they have no 
children, it must go to my nearest of kin. But I most 
especially desire that it may remain in the male line as 
long as one is found worthy of it. My grandfather be- 
queathed his land to the spear half, and not to the spindle 
half. If, therefore, I have bestowed any of his possessions 
on a female, my relations must redeem it, if they will, 
while she is living, but if not, it can be dealt with as we 
have before settled. But if they take it, it must be paid 
for; because those are my heirs 10 whom I shall give 
what 1 have to give as it seems best to me. whether male 
or female." 



, 



184 T HE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

It is pleasing to add that Alfred was before 
his age in the treatment of bondmen. He granted 
important alleviations to all his bondmen. They 
were not to be bound to the soil any longer: 
they were free to transfer their services to any 
master they chose. 

When we look at the bequests of money we 
are faced with the enormous difficulty of ascer- 
taining the value of money then compared with 
its value to-day. This difficulty, indeed, runs 
through the whole of English history down to 
the present time. For instance, in the year 1700 
an income of ^100 a year was worth a great deal 
more than it would be to-day; yet some things 
are much cheaper. The reasons are manifold : 
the increased price of certain things, the advance 
in the manner of living and in the standards of 
comfort, the creation of new wants and new 
necessities. So in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries, when we read that a sheep could be 
had for a few shillings and a goose for a few 
pence, we want to know what was meant by a 
shilling or a penny ; what were the standards 
of comfort; what was meant by rent, by clothing, 
by fuel, and by all the things which were then 
wanted for the daily life. We want to know ex- 
actly what a craftsman required for a " living 
wage." This can be ascertained pretty well for 
the Plantagenet period, but for the ninth cen- 
tury, so far as I know, it cannot be ascertained. 
Another point is the plenty or the scarcity of 
coin ; where there is little money in circulation 
a great deal of trade is carried on by exchange 
— taxes and dues are payable in kind — and an 
extraordinary value is attached to money. So 
that when we read of a sum of ^100 bequeathed 



DEATH OF THE KING. 185 

by Alfred to each of his daughters we are almost 
wholly in the dark as to the value and the mean- 
ing of the bequest. It is sufficient for us to know 
that in the condition of Wessex at that time it 
represented a comparatively large sum of money 
according to the modern value. 

It is the purpose — the wise and patriotic pur- 
pose, of certain persons to erect, for these and 
other reasons, a monument, visible to all, to the 
memory of King Alfred. 

Some of the points which I have recalled in 
this paper may help to show why such a monument 
would have been fitting at any time during the 
last thousand years. There is, however, a special 
reason which makes the erection of such a monu- 
ment very necessary — I use the word necessary ad- 
visedly — at the present time. In the year 1897, 
on that memorable day when we were all drunk 
with the visible glory and the greatness of the 
Empire, there arose in the minds of many a feel- 
ing that we ought to teach the people the meaning 
of what we saw set forth in that procession — the 
meaning of our Empire, not only what it is, but 
how it came, through whose creation, by whose 
foundation. Now, so much is Alfred the Founder 
that every ship in our navy might have his name, 
every school his bust, every guildhall his statue. 
He is everywhere. But he is invisible. And the 
people do not know him. The boys do not learn 
about him. There is nothing to show him. We 
want a monument to Alfred, if only to make the 
people learn and remember the origin of our Em- 
pire, if only that his noble example may be kept 
before us, to stimulate and to inspire and to 
encourage. 

It seems unnecessary to urge that a monument 



1 86 THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 

to Alfred must be set up in Winchester, and not 
in London or in Westminster, or anywhere else. 
In Winchester lies the dust of his ancestors, and 
of the kings his successors. Thirty-five of his 
line made Winchester their capital ; twenty were 
buried in the cathedral. In this city Alfred re- 
ceived instruction from St. Swithin ; the city was 
already old and venerable when Alfred was a boy. 
He was buried first in the cathedral, and after- 
wards in the abbey, which he himself founded, 
hard by. The name of Alfred's country, well-nigh 
forgotten, except by scholars, has been revived of 
late years by a Wessex man, Thomas Hardy. But 
the name of Alfred's capital continues in the 
venerable and historic city of Winchester, which 
yields to none in England for the monuments and 
the memories of the past. 

I venture, lastly, to express my own personal 
hope that, great as were the achievements of 
Alfred, the keynote to be struck and to be main- 
tained will be that Alfred is, and will always 
remain, the typical man of our race — call him 
Anglo-Saxon, call him American, call him Eng- 
lishman, call him Australian — the typical man 
of our race at his best and noblest. I like to 
think that the face of the Anglo-.Saxon at his 
best and noblest is the face of Alfred. I am 
quite sure and certain that the mind of the 
Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest is the mind 
of Alfred — that the aspirations, the hopes, the 
standards of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and 
noblest are the aspirations, the hopes, the stand- 
ards of Alfred. He is truly our leader, our 
founder, our king. When our monument takes 
shape and form, let it somehow recognize this 
great, this cardinal fact. Let it show somehow 



DEATH OF THE KING. 187 

bv the example of Alfred the Anglo-Saxon at his 
best and noblest— here within the circle of the 
narrow seas or across the ocean, wherever king 
Alfred's language is spoken, wherever King Al- 
fred's laws prevail, into whatever fair lands of 
the wide world King Alfred's descendants have 
penetrated. 




KING VLFRED. 



INDEX 



Adamnanus, Abbot, 39. 

" /Et Haethum" (Haddeby), 153. 

Alfred, army, 75, 105 ; at Athelney, 
91 ; childhood and education, 47, 
48, 66 ; death of, 104, 181 ; his 
mysterious disease, 69, 181 ; as an 
educator, 140 ; genealogy, 19, 48 ; 
jewel of, 122 ; as a law-giver, 127, 
137 ; restores London, 101, 166, 
174 ; marriage, 66, 69 ; navy, 85, 
101, 104, 109 ; reforms of, 106 ; re- 
ligion, 91, 113, 131 ; succession of, 
65, 82 ; wars of, 72 ; writings of, 
17, 146. 

Angles, settlement in England, 27. 

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 16, 160 ; 
quoted passim. 

Architecture in Alfred's reign, 166. 

" Army," the, 41. 

Army, Alfred's, 75. 105. 

Arnulphus the Pilgrim, 39. 

Ashdown, defeat of the Danes at, 

79- 
Asser, Bishop of Sherborne, 14 ; 

quoted passim. 
Athelney, 94 ; Alfred at, 91, 94 ; 

monastery at, 121, 127. 
Athelstan, king of Kent, brother of 

Alfred, 73, 77, 85, 109, 112, 166. 
Augustine, " Dialogues," 156. 

B. 

Bagsac, Danish king, 79. 

Baldwin of Flanders, 65. 

Basing, battle at, 81. 

Bede, ' Ecclesiastical History," 155. 

" Benedictionary " of St. Ethelwold, 

172. 
Bertric, King of Wessex, 60. 
" Blooms," book called, 158. 
Boadicea, 103. 



Boethius, " Consolation of Philos- 
ophy, 1 ' 154. 

Books, illustration and illumination 
of, 37, 171. 

Bowker, " Book of Essays on Al- 
fred," n, 18 ; quoted passim. 

Brad ford-on- Avon, Saxon church at, 
124, 125, 166. 

" Bretwald," 35. 

Britons, ancient, survivors of, 27 ; 
strength, 35. 

Burhred, King of Mercia, 74. 



Csedwall, King of Wessex, 56. 
Candles, as time measure, 126. 
Ceorls, the, 49. 
Cerdic, 19, 48, 53. 
Charles the Bald, 58, 140. 
Charmouth, Ethelwulf s victory at, 

4 2 - 
Chippenham, royal vill, 54 ; Danes 

at, 89. 
Christianity of ninth century, 37, 

56. 
Chronicles, as historical sources, 

17- 

Church, authority of the, 131. 

Coins, Alfred's, 169. 

Commerce, in ninth century, 26 ; 
under Alfred, 174. 

" Consolation of Philosophy," Al- 
fred's translation, 154. 

Court Close, Wantage, 48. 

" Cura Pastoralis," Alfred's trans- 
lation, 141, 155. 

D. 

Danes, the, 41, 42, 47, 66, 72, no. 
Dene, royal vill, 54. 
"Dialogues" of Augustine, trans- 
lated by Alfred, 156. 

189 



190 



THE STORY OF KING ALFRED. 



E. 

Eadburga, Asser's story of, 60. 

Eastland, the, 153. 

" Ecclesiastical History," Bede's, 
translated by Alfred, 156. 

Education, Alfred and, 140. 

Edward VII. ,48. 

Edward, son of Alfred, 183. 

Egbert, King of Wessex, " Bret- 
wald," 35, 41, 42, in. 

Elcherc, ealdorman, 73. 

Elfrida, daughter of Alfred, 182. 

Elswyth, wife of Alfred, 66, 182. 

" Enchiridion," or " Manual," Al- 
fred's, 159. 

Englefield, battle at, 78. 

Ethandune, Alfred's battle at, 97, 
182. 

Ethelbald succeeds Ethelwulf, 59 ; 
marries Judith, 64, 140 ; death of, 
64, 73. 

Ethelbert succeeds Ethelbald, 65, 

Ethelbert, King of Kent, laws of, 

130, 133, 139. 
Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred, 182. 
Ethelgiva, daughter of Alfred, 122, 

182. 
Ethelred, King of Wessex, 65, 74, 

78, 82. 
Ethelred, Earl of Mercia, 103. 
Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, 

172. 
Ethelwold, son of Alfred, 183. 
Ethelwulf, father of Alfred, 42, 48, 

52, 56, 58, 73. 
Ethelwulf, the alderman, 78. 
Exeter, 88 ; Danes at, 87. 



Fines, 134. 

Freeman, 18 ; quoted passim. 

Frene, Danish earl, 79. 

Florence of Worcester, chronicler, 

16. 
Fyrd, the, 76, 78, 83, 90, 96, 105, no. 

G. 

Gleemen, 168. 

Green, John Henry, 18 ; quoted 

passim. 
Gregory I., Pope, " Cura Pastora- 

lis" of, 141, 155. 
Grinstead, Saxon church at, 167. 
Guthrun, King of the Danes, 98, 

119. 



H. 

Haddeby (" ^Et Hasthum "), 153. 

Hall, the, picture of, 167. 

Harold, Danish earl, 79. 

Harrison, Frederic, 18 ; quoted pas- 
sim. 

Heahmund, Bishop, 82. 

" Heathen," the, 41. 

Hengestdum, Egbert's victory at, 
42. 

Hengist and Horsa, 36. 

High Garden, Wantage, 48. 

Hincmar, Archbishop, 58. 

Holidays, legal, 135. 

Hoisa, 36. 

Hunting in the time of Alfred, 163. 

I. 

India, embassy to, 174. 
Ine, King of Wessex, 56, 130, 132, 
i33, i39- 

J- 

Judges, Alfred's attitude towards, 
137- 

Judith, child-wife of Ethelwulf, 52, 
58 ; marries Ethelbald, 64, 140 ; re- 
turns to France, 64. 

Jutes, settlement in England, 27. 



Kenelm, the martyr king, 38. 

" King's Peace," origin of the, 136. 



Laws of Alfred, 127 ; of Ethelbert, 
King of Kent, 130, 133, 139 ; of 
Ine, King of Wessex, 130, 132, 
133, 139 ; of Offa, King of Mercia, 

130,. 133, i39- 
Learning of Alfred's court, 37, 38, 

68. 
Leo IV., Pope, receives Alfred, 56. 
Leonaford, royal vill, 54. 
London during Roman occupancy, 

28 ; restored by Alfred, 101, 166, 

174. 

M. 

" Manual," or " Enchiridion," Al- 
fred's, 159. 
Mercia, kingdom of, 35. 
Meretun, battle at, 82. 
Mints and coinage, 169. 
Monasteries, 144. 



INDEX. 



I 9 I 



Money, 169. 

Music in Alfred'* time, 167. 

N. 

Navy, Alfred's, 77, 85, 100, 104, 109 ; 

Athenian's, 73. 77, 85, 109. 
Normans, the, 45. 
Norsemen, invasion of the, 35, 41, 

62, no. 
Northumbria, kingdom of, 35. 

O. 

Oaths, 134. 

Ockley, Danes defeated at, 73. 

Offa, King of Mercia, 60, 130, 

Ordeais, 134. 

Orosius, Paulus, "Apology 

translated by Alfred, 149. 
( >sbern, Danish earl, 70. 
Osburh, mother of Alfred, 49, 55, 

58, 140. 
Oslac, Alfred's grandfather, 49. 
Oth-here, voyages of, 152. 



133, 



of, 



St. Swithin (or Swithun), Bishop of 
Winchester, 53, 55, 66, 186. 

Sandwich, naval victory of Athel- 
stan off, 73. 

Saxons, of ninth century, 26, 27 ; re- 
ligion of the, 117. 

Saxon church, Hradford-on-Avon, 
124, 125, 166. 

Schools, Alfred's, 140. 

Shaftesbury, monastery at, 122, 127, 
182. 

Sherborne, royal vill, 54. 

Ships, Danish, 46 

Sidrac, Danish earl, 79. 

Southampton, royal vill, 54. 

T. 
Time measured by candles, 126. 



Pauli's " Life of King Alfred," 1 
quoted passim. 

Penalties, 134. 

Pilgrimages, 38. 

Plegmund, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 120, 143, 161. 

Poetry of Alfred's time, 167. 

Proverbs of Alfred's time, 169. 

Punishments, 134. 

R. 

" Raven," capture of the Danish 

banner, 96. 
Reading, royal vill, 54 ; battle at, 78. 
Reforms, Alfred's, 106. 
Religion. Alfred's, 113, 131 ; of the 

ninth century, 56. 
Roads, Roman, 25, 29. 
Roman institutions, survival of, 28 ; 

roads, 25, 29 ; walls, 30, 76. 
Rome, effect of the fall of, 149. ' 



Verberie, Alfred at, 58. 
Vikings, 35, 43, 77- 
Vills, the royal, 54. 

W. 

Wantage, Berkshire, birthplace of 

Alfred, 48, 54. l82 - 
Wareham, Danes at, 86. 
Wedmore, treaty of. 99. 
Werefrith, Bishop of Worcester, 120, 

15°. 

Wessex, kingdom of, 35, 54 ; under 
Alfred, 83 ; devastated by the 
Danes. 90. 

Willebald, Bishop of Eichstadt, pil- 
grimage of, 39. 

Wilton, battle at, 83. 

Wimborn, royal vill, 54. 

Winchester, millenary celebration, 
11 • royal vill, 54 ; attacked by 
the Danes, 73 ; memorial at, 186. 

Writings of Alfred, 146. 

Wulfstan, voyages of, 152. 



THE END. 



(1. 



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